There are now February 20th actions planned in the Bay Area, CA (San Quentin); Columbus, OH; Los Angeles, CA; New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA and Washington, DC! See the Actions page for details on each demonstration.

What's new

Support is growing for the National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners and Occupy San Quentin!

We've added flyers for Occupy San Quentin, and more endorsers for Feb 20 - see the links above.

We need YOU! Are you planning an action? Let us know and we will list, promote and support! Email occupy4prisoners [at] gmail [dot] com!Jan 09 20121 CommentUncategorizedProposal to Occupy Oakland General Assembly

This proposal that was passed at the Occupy Oakland General Assembly, on Monday, January 9th

PROPOSAL

Summary

We are calling for February 20th, 2012 to be a "National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners."

In the Bay Area we will "Occupy San Quentin," to stand in solidarity with the people confined within its walls and to demand the end of the incarceration as a means of containing those dispossessed by unjust social policies.

Reasons

Prisons have become a central institution in American society, integral to our politics, economy and our culture.

Between 1976 and 2000, the United States built on average a new prison each week and the number of imprisoned Americans increased tenfold.

Prison has made the threat of torture part of everyday life for millions of individuals in the United States, especially the 7.3 million people-who are disproportionately people of color-currently incarcerated or under correctional supervision.

Imprisonment itself is a form of torture. The typical American prison, juvenile hall and detainment camp is designed to maximize degradation, brutalization, and dehumanization.

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased 7 times. Currently African Americans make up 12 % of the population in the U.S. but 53% of the nation's prison population. There are more African Americans under correctional control today-in prison or jail, on probation or parole-than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

The prison system is the most visible example of policies of punitive containment of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. Prior to incarceration, 2/3 of all prisoners lived in conditions of economic hardship. While the perpetrators of white-collar crime largely go free.

In addition, the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that in 2008 alone there was a loss in economic input associated with people released from prison equal to $57 billion to $65 billion.

We call on Occupies across the country to support:

1. Abolishing unjust sentences, such as the Death Penalty, Life Without the Possibility of Parole, Three Strikes, Juvenile Life Without Parole, and the practice of trying children as adults.

2. Standing in solidarity with movements initiated by prisoners and taking action to support prisoner demands, including the Georgia Prison Strike and the Pelican Bay/California Prisoners Hunger Strikes.

3. Freeing political prisoners, such as Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart, Bradley Manning and Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald, a Black Panther Party member incarcerated since 1969.

4. Demanding an end to the repression of activists, specifically the targeting of African Americans and those with histories of incarceration, such as Khali in Occupy Oakland who could now face a life sentence, on trumped-up charges, and many others being falsely charged after only exercising their First Amendment rights.

5. Demanding an end to the brutality of the current system, including the torture of those who have lived for many years in Secured Housing Units (SHUs) or in solitary confinement.

6. Demanding that our tax money spent on isolating, harming and killing prisoners, instead be invested in improving the quality of life for all and be spent on education, housing, health care, mental health care and other human services which contribute to the public good.

Bay Area

On February 20th, 2012 we will organize in front of San Quentin, where male death-row prisoners are housed, where Stanley Tookie Williams was immorally executed by the State of California in 2005, and where Kevin Cooper, an innocent man on death row, is currently imprisoned.

At this demonstration, through prisoners' writings and other artistic and political expressions, we will express the voices of the people who have been inside the walls. The organizers of this action will reach out to the community for support and participation. We will contact social service organizations, faith institutions, labor organizations, schools, prisoners, former prisoners and their family members.

National and International Outreach

We will reach out to Occupies across the country to have similar demonstrations outside of prisons, jails, juvenile halls and detainment facilities or other actions as such groups deem appropriate. We will also reach out to Occupies outside of the United States and will seek to attract international attention and support.

We have chosen Monday, February 20, 2012 at San Quentin, because it is a non-weekend day. Presidents' Day avoids the weekend conflict with prisoners' visitation, which would likely be shut down if we held a demonstration over the weekend.

Ralph Poynter updated his status: "GREETINGS FAMILY/COMRADES/SPIRIT WARRIORS- BE SURE TO PLACE OUR 'OCCUPY THE COURTS' EVENT IN YOUR CALENDAR. THE EVENING OF TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2012 IS THE DATE OF THE ALL NITE VIGIL PRECEEDING THE HEARING FOR LYNNE STEWART AT 500 PEARL STREET NEW FEDERAL COURT ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 29TH IN NYC. THE ALL NITE VIGIL WILL TAKE PLACE IN TOM PAINE PARK BESIDE THE COURT HOUSE. COME WITH YOUR DRUMS - YOUR SLEEPING BAGS - YOUR BANNERS SUPPORT LYNNE STEWART, LEORNARD PELTIER, MUMIA, BRADLEY MANNING AND ALL OF OUR FREEDOM FIGHTERS UNJUSTLY INCARCERATED IN THE TORTURE CELLS OF USA INJUSTICE SYSTEM."

#F29 - Occupy Portland National Call To Action To Shut Down the Corporations FEBRUARY 29, 2012by OccupyWallSt http://occupywallst.org/article/f29-occupy-portland-national-call-action-shut-down/

via Occupy Portland & Portland Action Lab:

"Occupy Portland calls for a day of non-violent direct action to reclaim our voices and challenge our society's obsession with profit and greed by shutting down the corporations. We are rejecting a society that does not allow us control of our future. We will reclaim our ability to shape our world in a democratic, cooperative, just and sustainable direction.

We call on the Occupy Movement and everyone seeking freedom and justice to join us in this day of action.

There has been a theft by the 1% of our democratic ability to shape and form the society in which we live and our society is steered toward the destructive pursuit of consumption, profit and greed at the expense of all else.

We call on people to target corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council which is a prime example of the way corporations buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves the interests of corporations and not people. They used it to create the anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona among so many others. They use ALEC to spread these corporate laws around the country.

In doing this we begin to recreate our democracy. In doing this we begin to create a society that is organized to meet human needs and sustain life.

On February 29th, we will reclaim our future from the 1%. We will shut down the corporations and recreate our democracy.

In the state of California working people with the lowest income pay a higher rate (11%) of state and local taxes than the rich (8%). This tax inequity has contributed to an 81 percent growth in the income of the wealthiest 1 percent of Californians between 1978 and 2008, while during the same period the income of the poorest 20 percent dropped by 11.5 percent.

We refuse to pay for the crisis created by the 1 percent. If we make the rich and the corporations pay, we can fully fund public education and social services and reverse the budget cuts, tuition hikes, and attacks on jobs. Join us in this peaceful demonstration.

Once again the San Francisco Bay Area comrades of the International Republican Socialist Network are reaching out to socialists, syndicalists, anarchists, and Irish, Scottish, and Welsh republicans to join them in marching in this year's San Francisco St. Patrick's Parade.

For the first time in the nearly three decades that local comrades have marched in the parade under the auspices of the H-Block/Armagh Committees, Irish Republican Socialist Committees of North America, and the International Republican Socialist Network the parade will actually take place on St. Patrick's Day, Saturday, March 17th.

As usual, the parade will begin at Market and Second Streets and our assembly point will no doubt be somewhere on Second Street and the time will be approximately 10:30, though details are not yet known.

As has been the case for many years, the IRSN will have a decorated truck--this year dedicated to the proud history of Irish Republican Socialism--but that entry will be joined by the Anti-Imperialist Contingent, composed of revolutionaries from many different organizations, united by their opposition to both British and American imperialism and their support for an independent, 32-country Irish socialist republic.

Participants in the Anti-Imperialist Contingent are welcome to bring their own identifying banners, as well as to join in carrying IRSC-supplied banners, raising slogans in opposition to imperialism and in support of the struggle for socialism in Ireland. The IRSN appreciates it when comrades who will be joining in march with the Anti-Imperialist Contingent let us know of their intent to do so in advance, as it helps us to better plan the organization of the contingent; the earlier you are able to do so, the more we appreciate it. For additional information, or to notify us of you or your organization's participation, please e-mail: irsp@netwiz.net.

As has long been our tradition, the IRSN will be welcoming all those who join us in marching in this year's parade to join in a post-parade party, featuring the very traditional combination of nachos and Margaritas (well, traditional for us anyway).

So mark your calendars and get your marching shoes ready, and come and join the International Republican Socialist Network in once again ensuring that St. Patrick's Day in the San Francisco Bay Area has a proudly visible representation of the Irish Republican Socialist tradition.

Only you can prevent the St. Patrick's Day Parade from becoming a green beer, ROTC, and Hooters-dominated event!

Come out to show your solidarity with the struggle for national liberation and socialism in Ireland and to help reclaim the revolutionary tradition of St. Patrick's Day in the US.

March 23-25, 2012 at the Stamford CT Hilton (one stop from Harlem/125th St. on Metro North commuter line)

Say No to the NATO/G8 Wars & Poverty Agenda

A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% Against the 99% at Home and Abroad

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the G-8 world economic powers will meet in Chicago, May 19-22, to plan their financial and military strategies for the coming period. These elites, who serve the 1% at home and abroad, impose austerity--often by the use of drones, armies, and the police--on the 99% to expand their profits.

Join activists from the antiwar, occupy, environmental, immigrant rights, labor, and other movements at a conference from March 23-25, 2012 to learn more, to plan a May 19 "No to NATO/G8" demonstration in Chicago, and to democratically develop a program of action for the months to follow.

Special guest speakers include:

-Xiomara de Zelaya is currently a presidential candidate in Honduras and the partner of Manuel de Zelaya, the former president displaced by a U.S.-backed coup in 2009.

-Bill McKibben is the founder of the grassroots global warming group 350.org and the architect of the successful campaign to defeat the XL pipeline.

-Glen Ford is the executive editor of Black Agenda Report, a ground breaking site that covers U.S. wars abroad and wars at home from the perspective of the African American community.

-Richard Wolff is the author Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It

-Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid is the founder of the Muslim Peace Coalition

-Vijay Prashad is the author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World

-Andrew Murray is a member of the UK Trades Union Congress General Council and head of UK Stop the War coalition from 2001-2011

-Col. Ann Wright was a central Gaza Boat organizer and the editor of Dissent: Voices of Conscience

UNAC, along with other organizations and activists, has formed a coalition to help organize protests in Chicago during the week of May 15 - 22 while NATO and G8 are holding their summit meetings. The new coalition was formed at a meeting of 163 people representing 73 different organization in Chicago on August 28 and is called Coalition Against NATO/G8 War and Poverty Agenda (CANGATE). For a report on the Chicago meeting, click here: http://nepajac.org/chicagoreport.htm

To add your email to the new CANGATE listserve, send an email to: cangate-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.

Click here for the talk by Marilyn Levin, UNAC co-coordinator at the August 28 meeting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tHQ7ilDJ8&NR=1

Click here for Pat Hunts welcome to the meeting and Joe Iosbaker's remarks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoNGcnBGGfI

NATO and the G8 Represent the 1%.

In May, they will meet in Chicago. Their agenda is war on poor nations, war on the poor and working people - war on the 99%.

We are demanding the right to march on their summit, to say:Jobs, Healthcare, Education, Pensions, Housing and the Environment, Not War!

No to NATO/G-8 Warmakers!

No to War and Austerity!

NATO's military expenditures come at the expense of funding for education, housing and jobs programs; and the G8 continues to advance an agenda of 'austerity' that includes bailouts, tax write-offs and tax holidays for big corporations and banks at the expense of the rest of us.

During the May 2012 G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, many thousands of people will want to exercise their right to protest against NATO's wars and against the G8 agenda to only serve the richest one percent of society. We need permits to ensure that all who want to raise their voices will be able to march.

Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel has stonewalled repeated attempts by community organizers to meet with the city to discuss reasonable accommodations of protesters' rights. They have finally agreed to meet with us, but we need support: from the Occupy movement, the anti-war movement, and all movements for justice.

Our demands are simple:

That the City publicly commit to provide protest organizers with permits that meet the court- sanctioned standard for such protests -- that we be "within sight and sound" of the summits; and

That representatives of the City, including Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, refrain from making threats against protesters.

The protest movement, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), has the support of a majority of the American people. This is because people are suffering from the economic crisis brought about by Wall Street and big banks. As the OWS movement describes it, the "99%" see extreme economic inequality, where millions are unemployed without significant help while bankers in trouble get bailed out.

In Chicago and around the country, the Occupy movement is being met with repression: hundreds have been arrested, beaten, tear gassed, spied on, and refused their right to protest.

The Chicago Police Department and the Mayor have already acknowledged that they are coming down hard on the Occupy movement here to send a message to those who would protest against NATO and the G8.

We need a response that is loud and clear: we have the right to march against the generals and the bankers. We have the right to demand an end to wars, military occupations, and attacks on working people and the poor.

How you can help:

1) Sign the petition to the City of Chicago at www.CANG8.org You can also make a contribution there.

2) Write a statement supporting the right to march and send it to us atcangate2012@gmail.com.

3) To endorse the protests, go to https://nationalpeaceconference.org/NATO_G8_protest_support.html or write to cangate2012@gmail.com

4) Print out and distribute copies of this statement, attached along with a list of supporters of our demands for permits.

4) And then march inChicago on May 15th and May 19th. Publicizethe protests. Join us!

Occupy Oakland Call for Participation in a May 1, 2012Global General Strike

Occupy Oakland decides to participate in the Global General Strike on May Day!!!

Posted January 30, by ragtag

Categories: Front Page, GA Resolutions, Notice

The Occupy Oakland General Assembly passed the proposal today!

Occupy Oakland Call for Participation in a May 1, 2012Global General Strike

The general strike is back, retooled for an era of deep budget cuts, extreme anti-immigrant racism, and massive predatory financial speculation. In 2011, the number of unionized workers in the US stood at 11.8%, or approximately 14.8 million people.

What these figures leave out are the growing millions of people in this country who are unemployed and underemployed. The numbers leave out the undocumented, and domestic and manual workers drawn largely from immigrant communities. The numbers leave out workers whose workplace is the home and a whole invisible economy of unwaged reproductive labor. The numbers leave out students who have taken on nearly $1 trillion dollars in debt, and typically work multiple jobs, in order to afford skyrocketing college tuition. The numbers leave out the huge percentage of black Americans that are locked up in prisons or locked out of stable or secure employment because of our racist society.

In December of 2011,Oakland's official unemployment rate was a devastating 14.1%. As cities like Oakland are ground into the dust by austerity, every last public dollar will be fed to corrupt, militarized police departments in order to contain social unrest. On November 2 of last year, Occupy Oakland carried out the first general strike in the US since the 1946 Oakland general strike,shutting down the center of the city and blockading the Port of Oakland. We must re-imagine a general strike for an age where most workers do not belong to labor unions, and where most of us are fighting for the privilege to work rather than for marginal improvements in working conditions. We must take the struggle into the streets, schools, and offices of corrupt local city governments. A re-imagined general strike means finding immediate solutions for communities impacted by budget cuts and constant police harassment beyond changing government representatives. Occupy Oakland calls for and will participate in a new direction for the Occupy movement based on the recognition that we must not only find new ways to provide for our needs beyond thestate we must also attack the institutions that lock us into an increasingly miserable life of exploitation, debt, and deepening poverty everywhere.IF WE CAN'T LIVE, WE WON'T WORK.

May Day is an international holiday that commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Massacre, when Chicago police defending, as always, the interests of the 1% attacked and murdered workers participating in a general strike and demanding an 8-hour workday. In the 21st century, despite what politicians tell us, class war is alive and well against workers (rank-and-file and non-unionized), students, people of color, un- and underemployed, immigrants, homeless, women, queer/trans folks, prisoners. Instead of finding common ground with monsters, it's time we fight them. And it's time we make fighting back an everyday reality in the Bay Area and beyond.

On May Day 2012, Occupy Oakland will join with people from all walks of life in all parts of the world around the world in a global general strike to shut down the global circulation of capital that every day serves to enrich the ruling classes and impoverish the rest of us. There will be no victory but that which we make for ourselves, reclaiming the means of existence from which we have been and continue to be dispossessed every day.REVOLT FOR A LIFE WORTH LIVING

Occupy the PGA in Benton Harbor, MI May 23-27, 2012http://wibailoutpeople.org/2011/12/29/occupy-the-pga-in-benton-harbor-mi-may-23-27-2012/

A personal invitation from the President of the NAACP , Benton HarborChapter:

It is our distinct honor and privilege to invite you on behalf of theNAACP-BH , the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO)and Stop The Take Over in Benton Harbor, Michigan to an eventscheduled for May 23-27, 2012 .

Occupy the PGABenton Harbor, MichiganSenior PGA Golf Tournament

We are committed to escalating the Occupy Movement to support humanrights in housing in addition to the push back against bailouts forfraudulent banks. They are stealing our homes and lives. Democracy isnon-existent here in Benton Harbor. Joseph Harris, the EmergencyManager must go! With pride, he called himself a "dictator."

The PGA will be played on a $750 million dollar, 530-acre resort nearthe lakeshore with $500,000 condominiums. We can not forget the threegolf holes inside Jean Klock Park that were taken from the BentonHarbor residents.

If your schedule does not permit your attendance on May 26, 2012,alternative action dates are May 23-25, 2012. Please let me know ifyou can accept the invitation to participate in Occupy the PGA. Weeagerly await your response. If you have any questions or concerns,feel free to contact me directly at (269-925-0001). Allow me to thankyou in advance.We the residents of Benton Harbor love you!

On January 28th, 2012, Occupy Oakland moved to take a vacant building to use as a social center and a new place to continue organizing. This is the story of what happened that day as told by those who were a part of it. it features rare footage and interviews with Boots Riley, David Graeber, Maria Lewis, and several other witnesses to key events.

Blame yourself for your problemsNot the bad economySo what if those who have the mostAre the ones who put it in jeopardy

Fuck your student loansFuck your kids and their health careIt'll only take 10,000 of your jobsTo put another private jet in the air

Save the richIt's so easy to doJust let yourself be ignorantTo what's been done to you

Save the richBy doing nothing at allDeny all sense and logicAnd just think really smallYou should think really smallOr just don't think at allAnd save the rich

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On Obama's SOTU:GM is a Terrible Model for US ManufacturingFrank Hammer: GM was rebuilt by lowering wages and banning the right to strike http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=7847

Defending The People's Micby Pham Binh of Occupy Wall Street The North StarJanuary 20, 2012http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=53Grand Central Terminal Arrests - MIRROR Two protesters mic check about the loss of freedom brought about by the passage of the NDAA and both are promptly arrested and whisked out of public sight.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7Tj7tEVx8A&feature=player_embedded

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"Welcome to Chicago! You're under arrest!"

"Under the new ordinance: Every sign has to be described in particularity on the parade permit. ...If there are signs not on the parade permit, police can issue an ordinance violation. What does that ordinance violation allow? It allows for every sign, the organizer ... can face $1000.00 fine--that's for every un-permitted sign--plus up to ten days in jail...."

Chicago City Hall Press Conference Against NATO/G8 Ordinance

YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYQfJcRNwqM

An impressive coalition of organizations -- unions, anti-war, human rights, churches and neighborhood groups -- held a press conference today (Jan. 17, 2012) at Chicago's City Hall. They were protesting the proposed new ordinances against demonstrations targeting the upcoming spring NATO/G8 meetings here, but now possibly to become permanent laws. The press conference took place right before two key City Council committees were to meet to consider whether to endorse the proposed new ordinances, prior to their going to a vote before the full City Council tomorrow. In this excerpt from the press conference, speakers include Eric Ruder, Coalition Against NATO/G8's War & Poverty Agenda; Erek Slater, ATU 241 member speaking for ATU International Vice Presidents; Talisa Hardin, National Nurses United; Wayne Lindwal, SEIU 73 Chicago Division Director; Jesse Sharkey, Vice President, Chicago Teachers Union.

For more info on fight against ordinance: (http://bit.ly/AntiLibertyOrdinance).

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This is excellent! Michelle Alexander pulls no punches!Michelle Alexander, Author of The New Jim Crow, speaks about the political strategy behind the War on Drugs and its connection to the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people in the United States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P75cbEdNo2U&feature=player_embedded

If you think Bill Clinton was "the first black President" you need to watch this video and see how much damage his administration caused for the black community as a result of his get tough attitude on crime that appealed to white swing voters.

This speech took place at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on January 12, 2012.

Release Bradley ManningAlmost Gone (The Ballad Of Bradley Manning)Written by Graham Nash and James Raymond (son of David Crosby) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYG7yJpBbQ&feature=player_embedded

Locked up in a white room, underneath a glaring lightEvery 5 minutes, they're asking me if I'm alrightLocked up in a white room naked as the day I was born24 bright light, 24 all alone

What I did was show some truth to the working manWhat I did was blow the whistle and the games began

Tell the truth and it will set you freeThat's what they taught me as a childBut I can't be silent after all I've seen and done24 bright light I'm almost gone, almost gone

Locked up in a white room, dying to communicateTrying to hang in there underneath a crushing waitLocked up in a white room I'm always facing time24 bright light, 24 down the line

What I did was show some truth to the working manWhat I did was blow the whistle and the games began

But I did my duty to my country firstThat's what they taught me as a manBut I can't be silent after all I've seen and done24 bright light I'm almost gone, almost gone(Treat me like a human, Treat me like a man )

A new study shows that by age 23, 41 percent of young Americans were arrested from the years 1997-2008. The survey questioned 7,000 people but didn't disclose the crimes committed. Many believe the arrests are related to the increase of police presence in schools across America. Amanda Petteruti from the Justice Policy Institute joins us to examine these numbers.

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"The mine owners did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them!" -- Big Bill Haywood

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1293. Big Coal Don't Like This Man At All (Original) - with Marco Acca on guitar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljtxjFKB718&mid=574

This song is a tribute to Charles Scott Howard, from Southeastern Kentucky, a tireless fighter for miners' rights, especially with regard to safety, and to his lawyer, Tony Oppegard, who sent me this newspaper article on which I based the song: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/charles-scott-howard-whistleblower-m...

The melody is partly based on a tune used by Woody Guthrie, who wrote many songs in support of working men, including miners.

My thanks to Marco Acca for his great guitar accompaniment at very short notice (less than an hour).

http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=142068

To see the complete lyrics and chords please click here: http://raymondfolk.wetpaint.com/page/Big+Coal+Don%27t+Like+This+Man+At+all

You can see a playlist of my mining songs here:http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CF909DA14CE415DF

You can hear a playlist of my original songs (in alphabetical order) here:http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B9F8E3B7A8822951

For lyrics and chords of all my songs, please see my website: http://www.raymondcrooke.com

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FYI:Nuclear Detonation Timeline "1945-1998"

The 2053 nuclear tests and explosions that took place between 1945 and 1998 are plotted visually and audibly on a world map. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9lquok4Pdk&feature=share&mid=5408

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Lifting the VeilOur democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. --HELEN KELLER

Suggested slogan for the 2012 elections:

DON'T VOTE FOR THE ONE PERCENT!We working people--employed, unemployed, partially employed or retired--can't get any economic justice by voting for the One Percent! We need to occupy the elections with our own candidates of, by and for working people! --Bonnie Weinstein

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

Brought to you by the people who occupy wall street. Why will YOU occupy?

SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION AT:http://bailoutpeople.org/dropchargesonoccupywallstarrestees.shtml to send email messages to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NYC City Council, NYPD, the NY Congressional Delegation, Congressional Leaders, the NY Legislature, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, members of the media YOU WANT ALL CHARGES DROPPED ON THE 'OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTEES!

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We Are The People Who Will Save Our Schools

YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFAOJsBxAxY

This video begins with Professor of Education Pauline Lipman (University of Illinois-Chicago) briefly recapping the plans hatched a decade ago in Chicago to replace public schools with private charter schools. Then Chicago Public Schools head Arne Duncan implemented those plans (Renaissance 2010) so obediently that President Obama picked him to do the same thing to every school system in the country. So Chicago's growing uprising against these deepening attacks against public education has national importance. Here is a battalion of voices from the communities and the teachers union, all exposing the constantly changing, Kafkaesque rules for evaluating school turn-arounds and closings. The counter-attack from the working people in the city is energized and spreading, and is on a collision course with the 1% who want to take away their children's futures. Includes comments from Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, teachers and parents from targeted school communities. Length - 24:40

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Documentary Footage (1963) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL2mU029PkQ&feature=fvsr

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In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the 44-Day Flint Michigan sit-down strike at GM that began December 30, 1936:

According to Michael Moore, (Although he has done some good things, this clip isn't one of them) in this clip from his film, "Capitalism a Love Story," it was Roosevelt who saved the day!):

"After a bloody battle one evening, the Governor of Michigan, with the support of the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, sent in the National Guard. But the guns and the soldiers weren't used on the workers; they were pointed at the police and the hired goons warning them to leave these workers alone. For Mr. Roosevelt believed that the men inside had a right to a redress of their grievances." -Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' - Flint Sit-Down Strike http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8x1_q9wg58

But those cannons were not aimed at the goons and cops! They were aimed straight at the factory filled with strikers! Watch what REALLY happened and how the strike was really won!

A newly released report on the Fukushima nuclear crisis says it was down to the plant's operators being ill-prepared and not responding properly to the earthquake and tsunami disaster. A major government inquiry said some engineers abandoned the plant as the trouble started and other staff delayed reporting significant radiation leaks. Professor Christopher Busby, scientific secretary to the European Committee on Radiation Risks, says health damage after contamination will be more serious than Japan announced.

ILWU Local 10 longshore workers speak out during a blockade of the Port of Oakland called for by Occupy Oakland. Anthony Levieges and Clarence Thomas rank and file members of the union. The action took place on December 12, 2011 and the interview took place at Pier 30 on the Oakland docks.

For more information on the ILWU Local 21 Longview EGT struggle go tohttp://www.facebook.com/groups/256313837734192/For further info on the action and the press conferernce go to:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz3fE-Vhrw8&feature=youtu.beProduction of Labor Video Project www.laborvideo.org

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Lifting the Veil"Our democracy is but a name...We choose between Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee" --Helen Keller, 1911

"It is naive to expect the initiative for reform of the state to issue from the political process that serves theinterests of political capitalism. This structure can only be reduced if citizens withdraw and direct their energies and civic commitment to finding new life forms...The old citizenship must be replaced by a fuller and wider notion of being whose politicalness will be expressed not in one or two modes of actibity--voting or protesting--but in many." --Sheldon Wolinhttp://topdocumentaryfilms.com/lifting-the-veil/

This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the graveyard of social movements, the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth in the United States, the continuity and escalation of neocon policies under Obama, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself.

Lifting the Veil is the long overdue film that powerfully, definitively, and finally exposes the deadly 21st century hypocrisy of U.S. internal and external policies, even as it imbues the viewer with a sense of urgency and an actualized hope to bring about real systemic change while there is yet time for humanity and this planet.

Noble is brilliantly pioneering the new film-making - incisive analysis, compelling sound and footage, fearless and independent reporting, and the aggregation of the best information out there into powerful, educational and free online feature films - all on a shoestring budget.

Live arrest at brooklyn bridge #occupywallstreet by We are Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULSI-31Pto&feature=player_embedded

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FREE THE CUBAN FIVE! http://www.thecuban5.org/wordpress/index.php

Free Them http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmS4kHC_OlY&feature=player_embedded

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The Preacher and the Slave - Joe Hill http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca_MEJmuzMM

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Visualizing a Trillion: Just How Big That Number Is?"1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years."Digital Inspirationhttp://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/

How Much Is $1 Trillion? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPfY0q-rEdY&feature=player_embedded

Courtesy the credit crisis and big bailout packages, the figure "trillion" has suddenly become part of our everyday conversations. One trillion dollars, or 1 followed by 12 zeros, is lots of money but have you ever tried visualizing how big that number actually is?

For people who can visualize one million dollars, the comparison made on CNN should give you an idea about a trillion - "if you start spending a million dollars every single day since Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have spend a trillion dollars".

Another mathematician puts it like this: "1 million seconds is about 11.5 days, 1 billion seconds is about 32 years while a trillion seconds is equal to 32,000 years".

Now if the above comparisons weren't really helpful, check another illustration that compares the built of an average human being against a stack of $100 currency notes bundles.

A bundle of $100 notes is equivalent to $10,000 and that can easily fit in your pocket. 1 million dollars will probably fit inside a standard shopping bag while a billion dollars would occupy a small room of your house.

With this background in mind, 1 trillion (1,000,000,000,000) is 1000 times bigger than 1 billion and would therefore take up an entire football field - the man is still standing in the bottom-left corner. (See visuals -- including a video -- at website:http://www.labnol.org/internet/visualize-numbers-how-big-is-trillion-dollars/7814/

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One World One Revolution -- MUST SEE VIDEO -- Powerful and beautiful...bwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE3R1BQrYCw&feature=player_embedded

I received the following reply from the White House November 18, 2011 regarding the Bradley Manning petition I signed:

"Why We Can't Comment on Bradley Manning

"Thank you for signing the petition 'Free PFC Bradley Manning, the accused WikiLeaks whistleblower.' We appreciate your participation in the We the People platform on WhiteHouse.gov.

The We the People Terms of Participation explain that 'the White House may decline to address certain procurement, law enforcement, adjudicatory, or similar matters properly within the jurisdiction of federal departments or agencies, federal courts, or state and local government.' The military justice system is charged with enforcing the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Accordingly, the White House declines to comment on the specific case raised in this petition...

"This email was sent to giobon@comcast.netManage Subscriptions for giobon@comcast.netSign Up for Updates from the White HouseUnsubscribe giobon@comcast.net | Privacy Policy Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

That's funny! I guess Obama didn't get this memo. Here's what Obama said about Bradley:

BRADLEY MANNING "BROKE THE LAW" SAYS OBAMA!

"He broke the law!" says Obama about Bradley Manning who has yet to even be charged, let alone, gone to trial and found guilty. How horrendous is it for the President to declare someone guilty before going to trial or being charged with a crime! Justice in the U.S.A.!

Mumia Abu-Jamal Transferred Out of Solitary Confinement, Into General PopulationPosted on January 27, 2012 prisonradiohttp://prisonradio.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/mumia-abu-jamal-transferred-out-of-solitary-confinement-into-general-population/

The Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections tells Democracy Now! it has transferred Mumia Abu-Jamal out of solitary confinement and into general population. The move comes seven weeks after Philadelphia prosecutor Seth Williams announced he would not pursue the death penalty against the imprisoned journalist. Abu-Jamal's legal team confirmed the move in an email from attorney, Judy Ritter. "This is a very important moment for him, his family and all of his supporters," Ritter wrote.

Supporters of Abu-Jamal note prison officials just received more than 5,000 petitions calling for his transfer and release. Superintendent John Kerestes has previously said Abu-Jamal would have to cut short his dreadlocks, and meet several other conditions, before a transfer would be allowed.

While on death row at SCI Green, Abu-Jamal made regular phone calls to Prison Radio in order to record his columns and essays, but prison officials revoked his phone privileges after he was moved to SCI Mahanoy, the Frackville, PA prison in which he's currently being held. Prison Radio has since announced it will continue to record and distribute Abu-Jamal's essays as read by his well-known supporters.

ONA MOVE! This is to inform folks that if there is not a chartered bus leaving from your area going to the "occupy for Mumia" action in DC. on April 24th, you should check out Mega Bus at www.megabus.com .They have very reasonable fares and the sooner you reserve a seat, the cheaper it is, so don't delay. The fares have gone up a bit just today. Hope to see you in DC on the 24th---Ramona (more info at www.freemumia.com)

From: National Lawyers Guild

SCI Mahanoy, February 2, 2012. Mumia Abu-Jamal celebrates his move off of death row with Heidi Boghosian and Professor Johanna Fernandez. This was Mumia's second contact visit in 30 years. His transfer to general population comes after a federal court ruled that instructions to jurors during his trial influenced them to choose death. A broad people's movement secured this victory, and it can now refocus on the goal of freedom. Join us on April 24, Mumia's birthday, as we Occupy the Justice Department in Washington, DC!

DREAD TIMES - Dedicated to the free flow of information - http://www.dreadtimes.com/

Heidi Boghosian and I just returned from a very moving visit with Mumia. We visited yesterday, Thursday, February 2. This was Mumia's second contact visit in over 30 years, since his transfer to General Population last Friday, Jan 27. His first contact visit was with his wife, Wadiya, on Monday, January 30.

Unlike our previous visits to Death Row at SCI Greene and to solitary confinement at SCI Mahanoy, our visit yesterday took place in a large visitor's area, amidst numerous circles of families and spouses who were visiting other inmates. Compared to the intense and focused conversations we had had with Mumia in a small, isolated visiting cell on Death Row, behind sterile plexiglass, this exchange was more relaxed and informal and more unpredictably interactive with the people around us...it was more human. There were so many scenes of affection around us, of children jumping on top of and pulling at their fathers, of entire families talking intimately around small tables, of couples sitting and quietly holding each other, and of girlfriends and wives stealing a forbidden kiss from the men they were there to visit (kisses are only allowed at the start and at the end of visits). These scenes were touching and beautiful, and markedly different from the images of prisoners presented to us by those in power. Our collective work could benefit greatly from these humane, intimate images.

When we entered, we immediately saw Mumia standing across the room. We walked toward each other and he hugged both of us simultaneously. We were both stunned that he would embrace us so warmly and share his personal space so generously after so many years in isolation.

He looked young, and we told him as much. He responded, "Black don't crack!" We laughed.

He talked to us about the newness of every step he has taken since his release to general population a week ago. So much of what we take for granted daily is new to him, from the microwave in the visiting room to the tremor he felt when, for the first time in 30 years, he kissed his wife. As he said in his own words, "the only thing more drastically different than what I'm experiencing now would be freedom." He also noted that everyone in the room was watching him.

The experience of breaking bread with our friend and comrade was emotional. It was wonderful to be able to talk and share grilled cheese sandwiches, apple danishes, cookies and hot chocolate from the visiting room vending machines.

One of the highlights of the visit came with the opportunity to take a photo. This was one of the first such opportunities for Mumia in decades, and we had a ball! Primping the hair, making sure that we didn't have food in our teeth, and nervously getting ready for the big photo moment was such a laugh! And Mumia was openly tickled by every second of it.

When the time came to leave, we all hugged and were promptly instructed to line up against the wall and walk out with the other visitors. As we were exiting the prison, one sister pulled us aside and told us that she couldn't stop singing Kelly Clarkson's line "some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this." She shared that she and her parents had followed Mumia's case since 1981 and that she was overjoyed that Mumia was alive and in general population despite Pennsylvania's bloodthirsty pursuit of his execution. We told her that on April 24 we were going to launch the fight that would win Mumia's release: that on that day we were going to Occupy the Justice Department in Washington DC. She told us that because she recently survived cancer she now believed in possibility, and that since Mumia was now in general population she could see how we could win. She sent us off with the line from Laverne and Shirley's theme song - "never heard the word impossible!"- gave us her number, and asked us to sign her up for the fight.

We're still taking it all in. The journey has been humbling and humanizing, and we are re-energized and re-inspired!!

President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. It contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision.

The dangerous new law can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield. He signed it. Now, we have to fight it wherever we can and for as long as it takes.

Sign the ACLU's pledge to fight worldwide indefinite detention for as long as it takes.

The Petition:

I'm outraged that the statute President Obama signed into law authorizes worldwide military detention without charge or trial. I pledge to stand with the ACLU in seeking the reversal of indefinite military detention authority for as long as it takes.

And I will support the ACLU as it actively opposes this new law in court, in Congress, and internationally.

Urgent Appeal to Occupy and All Social Justice Movements: Mobilize to Defend the Egyptian RevolutionEndorse the statement here:http://www.defendegyptianrevolution.org/2011/12/19/defend-the-egyptian-revolution/

In recent days, protesters demanding civilian rule in Egypt have again been murdered, maimed and tortured by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Interior Security Forces (ISF).

The conspiracy, being brutally implemented in Egypt, is part of a global conspiracy to suffocate mass movements for socio-economic justice and is being done with direct assistance of the American government and the private interests which direct that government. We have word from friends in Egypt that SCAF, ISF and their hired thugs - armed by ongoing shipments of $1.3 billion in weapons from the U.S. government - plan to execute one by one all the leaders of the revolution, and as many activists as they can.

Accordingly, we need to ensure that people and organizers in the US and internationally are involved in closely monitoring the events unraveling in Egypt. By keeping track of the atrocities committed by SCAF and ISF, keeping track of those detained, tortured or targeted, and continuously contacting officials in Egypt and the US to demand accountability, cessation of the atrocities and justice, we can add pressure on SCAF, ISF and the forces they represent. In this way we may be able to play a role in helping save the lives of our Egyptian brothers and sisters.

Evidence of the conspiracy to execute the leaders and participants of Egyptian freedom movement, includes in very small part the following:

* Sheikh Emad of Al Azhar was killed by a bullet entering his right side from short range. This was seen at first hand by witnesses known to members of our coalition. Sheikh Emad was one of a small number of Azhar Imams issuing decrees in support of the revolution. His murder was no accident. * Sally Tooma, Mona Seif, Ahdaf Soueif, and Sanaa Seif, all female friends and relatives of imprisoned blogger and activist Alaa abd El Fattah, and all known internationally for their political and/or literary work, were detained, and beaten in the Cabinet building. * A woman protesting against General Tantawi, head of SCAF, was detained and then tortured by having the letter "T" in English carved into her scalp with knives. * Detainees are being tortured while in courtroom holding pens. Two men (Mohammad Muhiy Hussein is one of them) were killed in those pens.These are only a small number of the horror stories we are hearing. And we continue to receive reports from Cairo about a massive army presence in Tahrir Square and the constant sound of gunshots.These are only a small number of the horror stories we are hearing. And we continue to receive reports from Cairo about a massive army presence in Tahrir Square and the constant sound of gunshots.

In every way, Egypt's fight is our fight. Just like us, Egyptians are the 99%, fighting for social, political and economic justice.

The same 1% that arms the Egyptian dictatorship commits systematic violence in this country against the Occupy movement; antiwar and solidarity activists; and Arabs, Muslims, and other communities of color.

As the US Palestinian Community Network recently observed, "the same US-made tear gas rains down on us in the streets of Oakland, Cairo and Bil`in."

Because of Egypt's key strategic location, the fate of its revolution echoes across the world. Its success will bring us all closer to achieving economic and social justice. But its defeat would be a major blow to social justice movements everywhere, including Occupy.

In short, Egypt is key to the continued success of the Arab Revolution, and movements she has inspired.

For all these reasons, we ask Occupy and all U.S. social justice activists to join us in mobilizing to defend our Egyptian brothers and sisters by immediately organizing mass convergences on Egyptian embassies, missions, consulates, and at U.S. government offices, to demand:

* Cancel all US aid and shipment of military and police materiel to Egypt! * Stop the murders, tortures and detentions! * Release all detainees and political prisoners! * Immediate end to military rule in Egypt!

Please endorse and circulate this appeal widely. Please send statements with these demands to the bodies listed below. By endorsing, your organization commits to making these phone calls and following up continuously for the next week.

www.defendegyptianrevolution.org and defendegyptianrevolution@gmail.com

Tarek Mehanna - another victim of the U.S. War to Terrorize Everyone. He was targeted because he would not spy on his Muslim community for the FBI. Under the new NDAA indefinite military detention provision, Tarek is someone who likely would never come to a trial, although an American citizen. His sentencing is on April 12. There will be an appeal. Another right we may kiss goodbye. We should not accept the verdict and continue to fight for his release, just as we do for hero Bradley Manning, and all the many others unjustly persecuted by our government until it is the war criminals on trial, prosecuted by the people, and not the other way around.

All who have followed Tarek's trial with a belief in the possibility of justice through the court system will be shocked to learn that today the jury found him guilty on all seven counts of the indictment. In the six weeks that the prosecution used to present its case, it presented no evidence linking Tarek to an illegal action. Instead, it amassed a large and repetitive collection of videos, e-mails, translated documents, recorded telephone conversations and informant testimony aimed at demonstrating Tarek's political beliefs. The core belief under scrutiny was one that neither Tarek nor his defense team ever denied: Muslims have a right to defend their countries when invaded.

The prosecution relied upon coercion, prejudice, and ignorance to present their case; the defense relied upon truth, reason and responsibility. The government relied upon mounds of "evidence" showing that Tarek held political beliefs supporting the right to armed resistance against invading force; they mentioned Al-Qaeda and its leadership as often as possible while pointing at Tarek. It is clear they coerced Tarek's former friends and pressured them to lie, and many of them admitted to such. There is a long list of ways this trial proceeded unjustly, to which we will devote an entire post. The government's cynical calculation is that American juries, psychologically conditioned by a constant stream of propaganda in the "war on terrorism," will convict on the mere suggestion of terrorism, without regard for the law. Unfortunately, this strategy has proved successful in case after case.

Tarek's case will continue under appeal. We urge supporters to write to Tarek, stay informed, and continue supporting Tarek in his fight for justice. Sentencing will be April 12th, 2012. We will be sending out more information soon.

A beacon of hope and strength throughout this ordeal has been Tarek's strength and the amount of support he has received. Tarek has remained strong from day one, and even today he walked in with his head held high, stood unwavering as the verdict was read to him, and left the courtroom just as unbowed as ever. His body may be in prison now, but certainly this is a man whose spirit can never be caged. His strength must be an inspiration to us all, even in the face of grave circumstances. Before he left the courtroom, he turned to the crowd of supporters that was there for him, paused, and said, "Thank you, so much." We thank you too. Your support means the world to him.

You are here: Home » ACLU | "Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security" by Christopher Ott

BOSTON - The following statement on the conviction today of Tarek Mehanna may be attributed to American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts executive director Carol Rose:

"The ACLU of Massachusetts is gravely concerned that today's verdict against Tarek Mehanna undermines the First Amendment and threatens national security.

"Under the government's theory of the case, ordinary people-including writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers-could be prosecuted for researching or translating controversial and unpopular ideas. If the verdict is not overturned on appeal, the First Amendment will be seriously compromised.

"The government's prosecution does not make us safer. Speech about even the most unpopular ideas serves as a safety valve for the expression of dissent while government suppression of speech only drives ideas underground, where they cannot be openly debated or refuted.

"The ACLU believes that we can remain both safe and free, and, indeed, that our safety and our freedom go hand in hand."

The ACLU of Massachusetts has condemned the use of conspiracy and material support charges where the charges are based largely on First Amendment-protected expression.

In Mr. Mehanna's case, the charges against him have been based on allegations of such activity, such as watching videos about "jihad", discussing views about suicide bombings, translating texts available on the Internet, and looking for information about the 9/11 attackers. Historically, government prosecutors have used conspiracy charges as a vehicle for the suppression of unpopular ideas, contrary to the dictates of the First Amendment and fundamental American values.

After the ACLU of Massachusetts submitted a memorandum of law in support of Mehanna's motion to dismiss the parts of the indictment against him that were based on protected expression, U.S. District Court Judge George O'Toole denied permission for the memorandum to be filed with the court. A copy of the memorandum is available here.

MUMIA HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO SCI MAHANOY!From: info@freemumia.comDecember 14, 2011

Greetings all,

Just verified with Superintendent John Kerestes that Mumia Abu-Jamal is being held in Administrative Custody at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA until he is cleared to enter general population within a few days.

We need phone calls to the institution to let them know that the WORLD is watching Mumia's movements and ask general questions so that they know that nothing they are doing is happening under cover of darkness.

Please also send cards and letters to Mumia at the new address so that he begins receiving mail immediately and it is known to all of the people there that we are with him!

CURRENT VISITORS on Mumia's list will allegedly be OK'd to visit once their names are entered into the computer at Frackville. NEW VISITORS will have to receive the pertinent forms directly from Mumia.

DIRECTIONS TO THE PRISON are available at http://www.cheapjailcalls.com/correctional-facility-directory/state-prison-directory/item/sci-mahanoy

At no time since the Iranian people rose up against the hated U.S-installed Shah has a U.S./Israeli military attack against Iran seemed more possible. Following three decades of unrelenting hostility, the last few months have seen a steady escalation of charges, threats, sanctions and actual preparations for an attack.

We, the undersigned demand No War, No Sanctions, no Internal Interference in Iran.

(For a complete analysis of the prospects of war, click here)http://nepajac.org/unaciran.htm

A Child's View from GazaA collection of drawings by children in the Gaza Strip, art that was censored by a museum in Oakland, California.

With a special forward by Alice Walker, this beautiful, full-color 80-page book from Pacific View Press features drawings by children like Asil, a ten-year-old girl from Rafah refugee camp, who drew a picture of herself in jail, with Arabic phrases in the spaces between the bars: "I have a right to live in peace," "I have a right to live this life," and "I have a right to play."

For international or bulk orders, please email: meca@mecaforpeace.org, or call: 510-548-0542

A Child's View from Gaza: Palestinian Children's Art and the Fight Against Censorship [ISBN: 978-1-881896-35-7]

Say No to Police Repression of NATO/G8 Protestshttp://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression

The CSFR Signs Letter to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

The CSFR is working with the United National Antiwar Committee and many other anti-war groups to organize mass rallies and protests on May 15 and May 19, 2012. We will protest the powerful and wealthy war-makers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Group of 8. Mobilize your groups, unions, and houses of worship. Bring your children, friends, and community. Demand jobs, healthcare, housing and education, not war!

Office of the MayorCity of ChicagoTo: Mayor Rahm Emanuel

We, the undersigned, demand that your administration grant us permits for protests on May 15 and 19, 2012, including appropriate rally gathering locations and march routes to the venue for the NATO/G8 summit taking place that week. We come to you because your administration has already spoken to us through Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. He has threatened mass arrests and violence against protestors.

[Read the full text of the letter here: http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/nato-g8-police-repression/full-text]

For the 10s of thousands of people from Chicago, around the country and across the world who will gather here to protest against NATO and the G8, we demand that the City of Chicago:

1. Grant us permits to rally and march to the NATO/G8 summit 2. Guarantee our civil liberties 3. Guarantee us there will be no spying, infiltration of organizations or other attacks by the FBI or partner law enforcement agencies.

December 16-22, the world turned its eyes to a small courtroom on Fort Meade, MD, where accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Army PFC Bradley Manning made his first public appearance after 18 months in pre-trial confinement. The "Article 32" pre-trial hearing is normally a quick process shortly after one is arrested to determine whether and what kind of court martial is appropriate. Bradley's hearing was unusual, happening 18 months after his arrest and lasting seven days.

Courage to Resist and the Bradley Manning Support Network organized two public rallies at Fort Meade to coincide with the beginning of the hearing, and there were about 50 solidarity rallies across the globe. We also sent representatives into the courtroom during all seven days of the hearing to provide minute-by-minute coverage via bradleymanning.org, Facebook, and Twitter.

"No harm in transparency: Wrap-up from the Bradley Manning pretrial hearing" includes our collection of courtroom notes"Statement on closed hearing decisions" covers how even this hearing was far from "open"

Article and photos by John GrantA message from Bradley and his family

"I want you to know how much Bradley and his family appreciate the continuing support of so many, especially during the recent Article 32 hearing. I visited Bradley the day after Christmas-he is doing well and his spirits are high."-Bradley's Aunt Debra

"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower

Jeff PatersonProject Director, Courage to ResistFirst US military service member to refuse to ﬁght in IraqPlease donate today.

https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590

P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!

Please click here to forward this to a friend who mightalso be interested in supporting GI resisters.http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com

Drop the Charges Against Carlos Montes, Stop the FBI Attack on the Chicano and Immigrant Rights Movement, and Stop FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!Call Off the Expanding Grand Jury Witchhunt and FBI Repression of Anti-War Activists NOW!

Cancel the Subpoenas! Cancel the Grand Juries!Condemn the FBI Raids and Harassment of Chicano, Immigrant Rights, Anti-War and International Solidarity Activists!

STOP THE FBI CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION AGAINST CHICANO, IMMIGRANT RIGHTS, ANTI-WAR AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS NOW!Initiated by the Committee to Stop FBI Repression stopfbi.net stopfbi@gmail.com

The Grand Jury is still on its witch hunt and the FBI is stillharassing activists. This must stop.Please make these calls:1. Call U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at 312-353-5300 . Then dial 0(zero) for operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk.2. Call U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder 202-353-1555 3. Call President Obama at 202-456-1111

We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.

Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....

ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE

An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......

At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:

HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!

Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange

Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.

Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.

Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/

Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too. Especially here . . .

To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.

Visiting is very liberal but first she has to get people on her visiting list; wait til she or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.

Commissary Money:

Commissary Money is always welcome It is how Lynne pay for the phone and for email. Also for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) (A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing, ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa, etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons, 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated? Of course, it's the BOP !)

URGENT ACTION APPEAL- From Amnesty International USA17 December 2010Click here to take action online: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084

To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success

For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf

Short Video About Al-Awda's WorkThe following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurlSupport Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!

Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.

To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go tohttp://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.

2) U.S. and Japan Are in Talks to Expedite Exit of 8,000 Marines on OkinawaBy MARTIN FACKLERFebruary 8, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/world/asia/japan-in-talks-to-renegotiate-part-of-okinawa-deal-with-united-states.html?ref=world

6) Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say"'We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,' said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites." [This article blames the inequality on single-parent families who stay single because they get welfare which makes it easier to stay single! I can't believe this is ignorance--it's bigoted and mean spirited and designed to blame the poor for being poor. And I, for one who was a single parent of two boys; who worked and went to school; who graduated her masters with an overall 3.59 GPA (it was 4.0 for the year I graduated); who never did get a full-time teaching job; and hence, at the age of 67, still owes a bazillion dollars in student loans; am sick of it! ...bw]By SABRINA TAVERNISEFebruary 9, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?hp

8) In Europe, Stagnation as a Way of LifeBy LIZ ALDERMAN and LANDON THOMAS Jr.February 9, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/business/global/after-accord-in-athens-uncertainties-loom-for-europe.html?ref=world

9) Amid Protesters' Disruptions, City Board Votes to Close 18 Schools and Truncate 5"Some of the members of the panel, who sat on the stage, wore headphones so they could hear the testimony of the speakers who stayed to be heard at the microphone. Most of the speakers opposed the closings, but a few parents urged the city to open new and better schools."By Anna M. PhillipsFebruary 10, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/02/10/amid-protesters-disruptions-city-board-votes-to-close-18-schools-and-truncate-5/?ref=nyregion

13) A Confused Nuclear Cleanup"A day laborer wiping down windows at an abandoned school nearby shrugged at the work crew's haphazard approach. 'We are all amateurs,' he said. 'Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation.'"By HIROKO TABUCHIFebruary 10, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/business/global/after-fukushima-disaster-a-confused-effort-at-cleanup.html?ref=world

14) Across the Country, Looking for the Recovery"Holly Kiluk, 47, has become used to the seasonal ebbs of her husband's job as an asphalt worker and feels her family is 'one of the few that are getting by,' in her town of Ashby, Mass., near the New Hampshire line northwest of Boston. She has made it work in part by bargain hunting. She buys men's sweatshirts that can perform double duty - she shares them with her grandson who lives with her. And when gas prices rose, she moved her five children to a school closer to home. Ms. Kiluk's daughter, Katie, said that few of her friends have found well-paying jobs, and many have joined the military instead. And few of those returning from Iraq have landed a job. For the most part, Ms. Kiluk blames President Obama for the economic stagnation. 'I don't think he's helped us. I think he picked up a mess and made it bigger,' she said, adding that she was particularly disappointed by the stimulus. 'It was all a gimmick, all a farce.' Still, she has little faith in the Republican Party, either. 'Every candidate wants to cut this, cut that,' she said. 'There isn't anything I agree with, with the people running now. I wish it were different.'"By JENNIFER MEDINAFebruary 11, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/us/across-the-country-looking-for-the-economic-recovery.html?ref=us

KABUL, Afghanistan - The war refugee Sayid Mohammad lost his last son on Wednesday, 3-month-old Khan, who became the 24th child to die of exposure in camps here in the past month.

"After we had dinner he was crying all night of the cold," Mr. Mohammad said. The family had no wood and was husbanding a small portion of paper and plastic that his daughter had scavenged that day. He said the boy had seemed healthy and was breast-feeding normally, though the family's dinner consisted only of tea and bread. But he kept crying. "Finally we started a fire, but it wasn't enough," Mr. Mohammad said. By 1 a.m. the boy was stiff and lifeless, he said.

Even by the standards of destitution in these camps, Mr. Mohammad's story is a hard-luck one; Khan was the eighth of his nine children to die. Back home in the Gereshk district of Helmand Province, six died of disease, he said. Three years ago they fled the fighting in that area for the Nasaji Bagrami Camp here, where a 3-year-old son froze to death last winter, he said. Like most of Kabul's 35,000 internal refugees, he fled the country's war zones only to find a life of squalor sometimes as deadly, even in the capital of a country that has received more than $60 billion in nonmilitary aid over 10 years.

Later Wednesday morning, Mr. Mohammad's sole surviving child, his daughter, Feroza, 10, stared saucer-eyed at her brother's tiny body as it lay in the middle of the family's hybrid dwelling, part mud hut, part tent, with United Nations-branded canvas for a roof.

Leaders of this camp say that 16 children aged 5 or younger have died here in the unseasonably cold weather and heavy snow that set in about a month ago, keeping nighttime temperatures in the mid-teens. Eight other children have died similarly in another Kabul camp, Charahi Qambar, according to camp representatives, religious leaders and families.

Government officials have expressed skepticism that the children could all have died of cold, saying the deaths were unregistered and not reviewed by medical personnel, while at the same time blaming the international aid providers for not sending more supplies.

Private Afghan companies and businessmen and some charitable groups have begun to distribute food, fuel, winter clothing, blankets, tents and cash support in the camps, but so far the effort has been sporadic and incomplete.

Other relief groups and Afghan government ministries are still in the process of surveying needs in the camp. As one relief worker said, "Starting an aid program even in a month would be fast work, and by then winter will be mostly over."

The Nasaji Bagrami camp counts 315 families who fled from war-torn southern provinces like Kandahar and Helmand. Some of their rough shelters had wood to burn in stoves, while others, like Mr. Mohammad's, had no substantial heat sources at all.

Mohammad Ibrahim, chosen by camp residents as their representative, held up his hand in a visual parable of the realities of inequitable resources. "See my fingers?" he said. "They are five, but none are equal."

The Mohammad family had two large blankets to share, plus the baby boy's blanket, a velveteen comforter with designs of teddy bears and bunny rabbits on it. "We didn't even have enough wood to make breakfast today," Mr. Mohammad said. A neighbor gave a small packet of potato chips to Feroza, whose name means turquoise, the gemstone.

In the bitter cold, relatives and friends gathered and meticulously followed the prescribed rituals for the dead. Hot water was brought in pitchers from neighbors' huts. The boy's body was laid on a plank in the hut's mud-walled yard, and washed five times with the hot water and soap, a pink bar of Safeguard. A ditch was dug so that the wash water would drain away and no one would step in it accidentally, which they viewed as potential sacrilege. Khan was so small that the hand of the man who washed him covered half of his body.

His mother, Lailuma, peeked from the door of the hut to watch, but otherwise the women stayed inside and apart. But Feroza, in a purple head scarf, slipped unnoticed past the men close to Khan's washing place, pressed into a crevice in the wall and watched wordlessly.

A clean white cotton sheet served as his burial shroud. The available scissors were too dull to cut it, so the men ripped it into pieces with their gloveless hands. After tying the sheet around Khan, they sprayed his shrouded form with perfume, and then they wrapped him again in his teddy and bunny blanket.

For prayers, performed on mats outside, the men removed their shoes; many had no socks. Then they carried Khan, bundled in one man's arms, in a silent procession to a graveyard.

The camp mullah, Walid Khan, pronounced the final prayers. Khan was laid in the grave with his face toward Mecca, and each of the mourners dropped in three handfuls of the hard earth.

Mr. Mohammad had not slept. His eyes were bloodshot. The septum of his nose had cracked from the cold, bleeding a little, and leaving a small red icicle. Feroza stood just to his side and behind him a little, clutching his coat. She coughed deeply and her father started. "Now she is sick, too," he said.

2) U.S. and Japan Are in Talks to Expedite Exit of 8,000 Marines on OkinawaBy MARTIN FACKLERFebruary 8, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/world/asia/japan-in-talks-to-renegotiate-part-of-okinawa-deal-with-united-states.html?ref=world

TOKYO - Japan and the United States said Wednesday that they were renegotiating a 2006 agreement in order to expedite the removal of 8,000 Marines from Okinawa. Under the current terms, their departure has been stalled until progress is made on relocating an important Marine air station on the island, a chronic underlying irritant in relations between the two countries.

Both sides have agreed to rework part of the agreement that makes relocation of the air station, the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, a precondition for moving the Marines, who along with their dependents were supposed to be transferred to Guam by 2014.

The large Marine contingent on Okinawa, a vestige of the American occupation of postwar Japan, has long been resented by the island's residents, and many Okinawans want the Futenma air station closed, not merely relocated. The requirement that the Marine presence cannot be reduced without progress on the air station has effectively frozen the entire deal.

"We decided to reduce Okinawa's burden as much as possible rather than remain stuck in a stalemate by adhering to the earlier package," Japan's foreign minister, Koichiro Gemba, told reporters. "America is also committed, but Japan must take the lead in resolving this issue."

In a separate statement from the Pentagon, George Little, a Defense Department spokesman, said that by agreeing to delink the Marine removal from the air station relocation, negotiators from both sides can "make progress on each effort separately, yet we remain fully and equally committed to both efforts."

The United States would keep a substantial military footprint on Okinawa even after the air station was relocated and the 8,000 Marines were removed. The island would still be host to 10,000 other Marines as well as the Air Force's Kadena Air Base, the largest United States airfield in the Asia-Pacific region.

Still, by decoupling the removal of the Marines from the more contentious Futenma air station issue, Mr. Gemba said his government hoped to finally begin reducing the military burden on Okinawa, and assuaging the anger of Okinawan voters.

He said he did not yet have a timeframe for when the Marines would leave, though he said it would be "soon." Analysts said the transfer would probably take longer than the 2014 deadline of the current agreement, which was originally reached in 1996 after the gang rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by American servicemen.

Mr. Gemba said Japan had taken the initiative in proposing Wednesday's plan out of a sense of responsibility for the delays, suggesting that they were due to Tokyo's inability to persuade Okinawans to accept a new Marine air base. He said he hoped to end a festering problem that had threatened to cause a rift with the United States, Japan's postwar protector with 50,000 military personnel in Japan. Those fears were reinforced in December, when the United States Congress, under pressure to cut the fiscal deficit, voted to cut $150 million from the 2012 budget to pay for the transfer to Guam.

"I don't think it was healthy for the Americans and the Japanese to always be talking about needing to show progress by a certain time because of the situation in the American Congress," Mr. Gemba said.

Mr. Gemba was vague on where the Marines would go under the renegotiated agreement, besides saying that a large number of them would relocate as originally planned to Guam, an American territory in the western Pacific Ocean. The original agreement had called for moving all the 8,000 Marines and their families to Guam, but recent Japanese news media reports have said 4,700 may go to Guam, with the rest rotated through other American bases in the region.

He was also vague on who would pay for the new realignment plan, a crucial question as both Tokyo and Washington try to cut fiscal deficits. Under the previous agreement, Japan was to pay 60 percent of the $10.3 billion cost to relocate the Marines to Guam, according to Japan's Ministry of Defense.

"I think this will be a big step forward," Mr. Gemba said. "We are working hard to regain even a bit of the trust of the people of Okinawa."

That trust was lost two years ago, when Yukio Hatoyama, then prime minister, reneged on a campaign promise to move the Futenma base off the island. The resulting feelings of angry betrayal on the island have been so intense that most analysts and politicians now agree that the Futenma relocation plan is effectively dead.

Under that plan, the base would have been moved from its current location in a crowded urban area to a safer spot on Okinawa's less populated north. The United States says it needs the new base to maintain its ability to respond quickly to a crisis in the region even with the reduction in the number of Marines.

Political analysts said those concerns also resonated with the government of Japan's current prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, who is seeking to maintain close ties to the United States at a time when Japan feels increasing anxiety about China's military expansion.

"The Noda government has come to the conclusion that the U.S.-Japan security alliance is too important to be deadlocked by a single base," said Yuichi Hosoya, a specialist on international affairs at Keio University in Tokyo.

Mr. Hosoya and other analysts also said Wednesday's proposal could ultimately help resolve the deadlock over the Futenma base. After the 8,000 Marines leave, the United States would turn over to Japan a half-dozen military installations that it will vacate on the island's more heavily developed southern half. Analysts said the return of this land, which accounts for about a fifth of all land on Okinawa occupied by the United States military, could soften opposition to a new air base by showing Okinawans tangible progress in reducing the American presence.

"The Noda government realized it must do something to show its willingness to reduce the burden of Okinawa," Mr. Hosoya said. "Today's proposal could be a turning point in ending a problem that has dragged on for 16 years."

WASHINGTON - For the first time in over three decades, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to decide to grant a license to build a nuclear reactor - a milestone for an industry whose long-hoped-for renaissance is smaller and later than anticipated.

The vote, set for Thursday, is on two new reactors at the Southern Company's Alvin W. Vogtle plant near Augusta, Ga. It would be the first vote on a construction license since 1978, a year before the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.

In anticipation of approval, the company has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in digging a foundation, laying pipes for cooling water and other steps at the site, where two reactors have been operating since the late 1980s.

Southern and its partners are swimming against the tide, betting that even with the project's approximately $14 billion price tag, nuclear power will prove cheaper than using coal, natural gas or any other source over the estimated 60-year lifetime of the reactors. Few other companies are willing to take the gamble, given the current economic and political picture.

Natural gas prices are at low levels, and pressures to address global warming by putting a price on carbon emissions have faded, diminishing hopes that nuclear energy will be championed as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels.

"In the current environment, we have the combination of low natural gas prices, abundant supplies of natural gas, relatively modest electricity demand growth coming out of the recession and the lack of a price on carbon," said James K. Asselstine, managing director of Barclays Capital, who served on the regulatory commission from 1982 to 1987. "It's probably unlikely we'll see other plants move to construction in the very near term."

Vogtle 3 and 4 were supposed to be the first in a wave of new projects after the Bush administration set aside $17.5 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear projects. But the nuclear rebirth has been so puny that much of that money is still available. The Energy Department has promised an $8.3 billion loan guarantee for the two reactors.

Mr. Asselstine and others say that the only other reactors that conceivably could be built in the next few years are two planned at the V.C. Summer plant in South Carolina.

Both Georgia and South Carolina regulate their utilities in the traditional way, allowing them to collect whatever they prudently invest, plus a profit margin, from their customers through electricity rates.

Georgia Power, the Southern Company subsidiary building the plant, said in a 2008 filing with the state Public Service Commission that electricity generated by Vogtle 3 and 4 could cost customers $6.5 billion less than power generated by coal or natural gas in the lifetime of the reactors.

In much of the Northeast and Midwest and in California, power plants are mostly built by third parties that sell the electricity in daily auctions on the open market, a setup that makes a long-term bet against natural gas difficult for a private company to swallow. For example, Constellation Energy, based in Baltimore, gave up on a third unit at its Calvert Cliffs site in 2010 after the federal government sized up the economics and demanded a huge fee in exchange for a loan guarantee.

Some industry experts and antinuclear groups argue that the Vogtle project poses major risks. "The potential is high for cost overruns, regulatory problems, outage issues, competing water needs in the state, drought situations, radioactive waste management issues and a range of ratepayer issues," the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an advocacy group, said in a filing with the Georgia Public Service Commission.

The new reactors would produce electricity at a cost of 7 to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour when Southern instead could be reducing demand by investing in efficiency at a cost of 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, the group said.

Nine organizations, including the Southern Alliance, said on Wednesday that they would sue to try to block the license because the commission had not adequately analyzed the new reactors' design for hazards in response to last year's disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. The commission has ordered existing plants to adopt some safeguards in response to the Fukushima calamity and is considering others.

But other analysts say the decision could look quite smart in retrospect, depending on market and regulatory factors. "What happens if we get fracking legislation?" said Eric Beaumont, an analyst at the firm Copia Capital, referring to pressure for tougher limits on a drilling technique that has depressed natural gas prices and greatly expanded reserves.

"Natural gas isn't going to remain cheap forever," he said.

Carbon policy is another wild card, Mr. Beaumont said, suggesting that the political pendulum could shift back toward imposing a tax on emissions of greenhouse gases. With a few changes, "lo and behold, it can make sense" to build the reactors, he said.

Aside from the 34-year hiatus in approval of construction, the commission's action will be a milestone in some other ways.

If the reactors are completed, the Vogtle plant, in Waynesboro, Ga., will become the largest nuclear complex in the United States. And the two reactors are of a kind that has never been built before, the AP1000, a model by Westinghouse that is supposed to withstand earthquakes and plane crashes and be less vulnerable to operator error or to a loss of all electricity, the last of which caused the triple meltdown at Fukushima.

Nuclear advocates point out that the design is virtually complete. By contrast, designers of reactors in the last round of construction, in the 1960s, '70s and '80s, were usually half a step ahead of the builders, resulting in repeated redesigns and cost increases.

Another plus is that China has four AP1000s ahead of Vogtle in the pipeline, enabling Southern to dispatch teams to watch those plants being built.

The company estimates that 3,400 workers will be on site in Waynesboro at the peak of construction, up from 1,500 now.

I was only five minutes from home, walking through an unlighted stretch on my way to the community center to work out in my Silver Spring, Maryland, neighborhood, an MP3 of Stevie Wonder crooning in my ear. The light hit me in the face and I fumbled to turn down the music, but raised my hands.

Since I hadn't been able to get the music turned down, I foolishly reached in my pocket to try again, prompting a louder warning: "Get your hands up!"

The officer appeared out of the dark, shining the light beam in my face. All business, he said: "What are you doing out here?"

"I'm on my way to the community center," I said.

"Okay," he said. "Move on."

A few minutes later, I was inside the center walking on the treadmill when the officer walked in.

"You shouldn't be walking around in the dark, listening to music," he said. "You're an easy mark for an attack."

I explained that I'd lived in my multi-cultural neighborhood for two decades. I felt comfortable.

He looked around the center. "Did you see some kids running up the hill?"

I hadn't and told him so. He said that as he had approached them in the parking lot, but they ran away from him. He chased them up the hill, but they got away again. The officer didn't say that the kids had done anything wrong, only that they ran away from him.

He never said so, but I can't help but believe that the kids in question were African American. That's who plays basketball at the community center and that's who congregates in the parking lot. So the problem seemed to be that black kids ran away from a (white) cop.

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem terribly surprising to me.

I happen to be the executive director of a national criminal justice reform organization, but I'm also a middle-aged white guy. We all know that lots of privileges go along with that status, but I was reminded of it by my encounter with this officer. Just the thought of what might have happened without that white privilege the second time I foolishly put my hand back in my pocket to try to turn off the music gives me chills.

It's hardly a secret that the relationship between African American communities and law enforcement over many years has been fraught with conflict. From the old days of station-house beatings to get a confession to today's "stop and frisk" practices in New York City, an awful lot of mistrust has been engendered.

Much has changed in recent years, of course. It's not unusual anymore to have a person of color as chief of police and many jurisdictions are doing an admirable job of collecting racial data on police activity to head off any inappropriate behavior by law enforcement agents. This is all very encouraging. But at the same time, we shouldn't be surprised that some of the long-term animosity between police and communities of color hasn't dissipated. So, while I have no idea whether the kids in the parking lot were doing anything wrong, I can certainly imagine the thought process that might have led them to run from the police.

My encounter also reminds me of the racial dynamics I see in the justice system overall. For many years I've delivered a guest lecture each semester at a Washington-area college class on criminal justice. Most of the students in the class are white. In discussing drug policy, I survey them informally regarding their experiences by asking how many of their friends use drugs, have been arrested for doing so, or are currently incarcerated on a drug offense. Every hand goes up on drug use, a few for the arrest question, and hardly any for the prison issue. When I then ask why there is so little criminal justice intervention when the campus is seemingly overrun with drug users, they show great sophistication in analyzing these dynamics. They recognize that as a community, we have an investment in their future and we generally can count on them to graduate from college and enter the ranks of the productive middle class. Thus, we're all better off acknowledging that these are "youthful indiscretions."

I can't disagree with such a response, or lack thereof, by the criminal justice system. But I'm quite troubled by the responses I get to these same questions when I speak to a group of mostly African American students, where all hands remain raised for all three questions. As long as we maintain a two-tiered system for public safety -- harsh punishments for some, second chances for others -- the prospects for achieving a full democratic society will be quite troubling.

Every week from now until the court martial the Bradley Manning Support Network will be asking supporters to write or call an influential person in the trial.

Just this week professor Mary Keck wrote an open letter to General Odierno, asking him to bring war criminals to justice, and to recognize the valor and honor of Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Pfc. Bradley Manning. We appreciate her letter, and would like to follow it up with as many calls and letters of support as possible! Please write General Odierno. Let him know blowing the whistle on war crimes should not be a crime. It should be a crime to hide them.

Professor Keck writes,

"Pfc. Bradley Manning has shown true courage at great cost to himself. Like all soldiers, he chose to serve knowing that he may die in combat, but he went above and beyond this duty by choosing to do what was right rather than what would make him popular. If the allegations that he leaked information to Wikileaks are true, he fulfilled his oath to protect and serve the citizens of the United States. Therefore, his actions should be celebrated just as we would recognize the deeds of any courageous service member."

Read her full letter, then write to Army Chief of Staff, General Raymond Odierno at the following address. Also visit his Facebook page, and his blog, and let him know how you feel about Bradley Manning's shameful incarceration and trial.

Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno

Chief of Staff of the US Army101 Army Pentagon, Rm. 3E672Washington DC 20310-0200Phone: 703-697-0900Email: raymond.t.odierno@us.army.mil

Here are a few suggested demands for your letters, messages, and phone calls:

* Allow the defense to present its case! Including, all of its evidence and witnesses. * Prosecute war criminals not whistle-blowers. * Stop denying the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture access to visit Bradley Manning. * Drop all the charges against Bradley Manning. * Recognize that Bradley is an honorable person & give him a medal. Free Bradley Manning!

WASHINGTON, DC - The United States Army announced today that a formal arraignment date has been set for PFC Bradley Manning. The arraignment has been scheduled for 01:00 PM EST, February 23, 2012 at Fort Meade, Maryland. This arraignment will set the dates for a series of hearings on pre-trial motions, as well as the start of the full court-martial.

"Bradley Manning's show trial will begin in earnest with this arraignment," said Jeff Paterson, a lead organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network. "If the Obama administration was the least bit concerned with providing a fair trial, they would have allowed the defense to explore critical issues, such as unlawful command influence, over-classification, and the torturous conditions to which PFC Manning has been subjected while in their custody. If they were concerned about justice, they would drop the charges against Bradley Manning and prosecute those whose crimes have been revealed."

Military officials have routinely blocked requests by Manning's defense team, led by Iraq war veteran David Coombs, for access to evidence and witnesses that could explore these and other relevant issues. During the Article 32 proceedings held in December, the defense was largely restricted by military officials to a discussion of mitigating factors related to Manning's emotional health. The defense is expected to renew their requests through additional motions leading up to the court-martial.

The arraignment comes as PFC Manning was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Icelandic Parliament. A blog post by MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir explained their rationale for the nomination:

"According to journalists, his alleged actions helped motivate the democratic Arab Spring movements, shed light on secret corporate influence on our foreign policies, and most recently contributed to the Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all U.S. troops from the occupation in Iraq."

Organizers with the Bradley Manning Support Network expect the court-martial to begin as early as May. Hundreds of supporters demonstrated outside the Article 32 hearings. Organizers say that the Obama administration can expect even larger numbers at the court-martial.

6) Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say"'We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,' said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites." [This article blames the inequality on single-parent families who stay single because they get welfare which makes it easier to stay single! I can't believe this is ignorance--it's bigoted and mean spirited and designed to blame the poor for being poor. And I, for one who was a single parent of two boys; who worked and went to school; who graduated her masters with an overall 3.59 GPA (it was 4.0 for the year I graduated); who never did get a full-time teaching job; and hence, at the age of 67, still owes a bazillion dollars in student loans; am sick of it! ...bw]By SABRINA TAVERNISEFebruary 9, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?hp

WASHINGTON - Education was historically considered a great equalizer in American society, capable of lifting less advantaged children and improving their chances for success as adults. But a body of recently published scholarship suggests that the achievement gap between rich and poor children is widening, a development that threatens to dilute education's leveling effects.

It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

"We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race," said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion - the single most important predictor of success in the work force - has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession's full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

"With income declines more severe in the lower brackets, there's a good chance the recession may have widened the gap," Professor Reardon said. In the study he led, researchers analyzed 12 sets of standardized test scores starting in 1960 and ending in 2007. He compared children from families in the 90th percentile of income - the equivalent of around $160,000 in 2008, when the study was conducted - and children from the 10th percentile, $17,500 in 2008. By the end of that period, the achievement gap by income had grown by 40 percent, he said, while the gap between white and black students, regardless of income, had shrunk substantially.

Both studies were first published last fall in a book of research, "Whither Opportunity?" compiled by the Russell Sage Foundation, a research center for social sciences, and the Spencer Foundation, which focuses on education. Their conclusions, while familiar to a small core of social sciences scholars, are now catching the attention of a broader audience, in part because income inequality has been a central theme this election season.

The connection between income inequality among parents and the social mobility of their children has been a focus of President Obama as well as some of the Republican presidential candidates.

One reason for the growing gap in achievement, researchers say, could be that wealthy parents invest more time and money than ever before in their children (in weekend sports, ballet, music lessons, math tutors, and in overall involvement in their children's schools), while lower-income families, which are now more likely than ever to be headed by a single parent, are increasingly stretched for time and resources. This has been particularly true as more parents try to position their children for college, which has become ever more essential for success in today's economy.

A study by Sabino Kornrich, a researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid, and Frank F. Furstenberg, scheduled to appear in the journal Demography this year, found that in 1972, Americans at the upper end of the income spectrum were spending five times as much per child as low-income families. By 2007 that gap had grown to nine to one; spending by upper-income families more than doubled, while spending by low-income families grew by 20 percent.

"The pattern of privileged families today is intensive cultivation," said Dr. Furstenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

The gap is also growing in college. The University of Michigan study, by Susan M. Dynarski and Martha J. Bailey, looked at two generations of students, those born from 1961 to 1964 and those born from 1979 to 1982. By 1989, about one-third of the high-income students in the first generation had finished college; by 2007, more than half of the second generation had done so. By contrast, only 9 percent of the low-income students in the second generation had completed college by 2007, up only slightly from a 5 percent college completion rate by the first generation in 1989.

James J. Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, argues that parenting matters as much as, if not more than, income in forming a child's cognitive ability and personality, particularly in the years before children start school.

"Early life conditions and how children are stimulated play a very important role," he said. "The danger is we will revert back to the mindset of the war on poverty, when poverty was just a matter of income, and giving families more would improve the prospects of their children. If people conclude that, it's a mistake."

Meredith Phillips, an associate professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, used survey data to show that affluent children spend 1,300 more hours than low-income children before age 6 in places other than their homes, their day care centers, or schools (anywhere from museums to shopping malls). By the time high-income children start school, they have spent about 400 hours more than poor children in literacy activities, she found.

Charles Murray, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute whose book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," was published Jan. 31, described income inequality as "more of a symptom than a cause."

The growing gap between the better educated and the less educated, he argued, has formed a kind of cultural divide that has its roots in natural social forces, like the tendency of educated people to marry other educated people, as well as in the social policies of the 1960s, like welfare and other government programs, which he contended provided incentives for staying single.

"When the economy recovers, you'll still see all these problems persisting for reasons that have nothing to do with money and everything to do with culture," he said.

There are no easy answers, in part because the problem is so complex, said Douglas J. Besharov, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. Blaming the problem on the richest of the rich ignores an equally important driver, he said: two-earner household wealth, which has lifted the upper middle class ever further from less educated Americans, who tend to be single parents.

The problem is a puzzle, he said. "No one has the slightest idea what will work. The cupboard is bare."

ATHENS - Protesters throwing fire bombs clashed with the police outside Parliament on Friday while Greek workers walked off the job in the second general strike this week in protest against new austerity measures the country must take to avert a disastrous default next month.

Adding to the anxiety surrounding negotiations over an international bailout for Greece, the leader of the smallest of three parties in the governing coalition said he would vote against an austerity package Greek lawmakers agreed to Thursday after marathon negotiations. "The creditors are asking for 40 years of submission," the politician, Georgios Karatzaferis, who heads the right wing party, Popular Orthodox Rally, told reporters. "Greece will not give itself up."

Mr. Karatzaferis party controls only 16 seats in Parliament, however, not enough to scuttle the deal if most of the other members of the coalition, the Socialists and New Democracy, support it. It would take a huge backbench rebellion for the vote to fail as the two largest parties still have 236 mps in the 300-member house.

The general strike came a day after the government reached a provisional deal with the so-called troika of foreign lenders - the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - on the terms of a new loan program. The government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos pledged to cut private-sector wages by more than 20 percent, lay off thousands of civil servants and slash public spending.

But skeptical creditors have demanded additional cuts to cover a $430 million shortfall created by the refusal of political leaders to slash supplemental pensions as well parliamentary approval and written commitments to the terms of the deal from the leaders of the three parties in Mr. Papademos's coalition before additional financing is released.

"Unfortunately, the euro group did not take a final, positive decision," Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said in the early hours of Friday after a grueling summit with euro zone peers talks in Brussels. "Many countries expressed objections, based on the fact that we did not fully complete the list of additional measures required to meet our targets for 2012." But he urged Greeks to support the additional measures demanded by the lenders.

While public sentiment was unclear, there was no doubt where the country's major unions stood. They called the strike on Thursday immediately after government officials announced the deal with creditors, which is expected to be voted on in Parliament on Sunday or Monday. Unions are planning protest rallies for both days of the strike, and the day of the vote when the crowds are expected to be largest.

The strike on Friday and Saturday will suspend most public transportation services, though flights will operate normally. Ferries will remain in ports and train services will be suspended. An urban rail service will run a limited service to allow protesters to join protest rallies. Government offices, schools and courts will close, and hospitals will be left to operate with emergency staff. Unionists and the leaders of leftist opposition parties have appealed to austerity-weary Greeks to fight the new barrage of cuts and not "bow their heads" to foreign creditors.

Mr. Karatzaferis called on Mr. Papademos to reshuffle his government and replace Socialist ministers with technocrats. He also accused creditors of trying to "deprive Greece of the last trace of national sovereignty" and expressed frustration with German officials, who have taken a hard line in the negotiations.

"Greece cannot survive outside the E.U.," he said, "but it can do without a German jackboot."

Both the Greek austerity measure and a write down of Greek debt by private investors must be finalized in the coming weeks to ensure the release of rescue financing so that Greece can pay a $19 billion bond that matures on March 20 and avoid a default that would shake the euro zone.

Despite the high stakes, the leaders of the three parties in Greece's coalition government have opposed too much austerity, mindful of early elections expected in April. The Conservative New Democracy leader, Antonis Samaras, whose party is leading in the polls, repeated calls for elections as soon as possible in a televised speech late on Thursday. The former prime minister and Socialist PASOK leader, George Papandreou, whose administration signed the first bailout with the troika in May 2010, has been the least militant.

The government is expected to pass the new package. However, several coalition legislators have indicated that they object to certain measures - chiefly wage cuts - and may vote against them. The measures were expected to by approved by the cabinet on Friday as coalition parties convened their lawmakers to discuss the bill ahead of the vote.

But harried political leaders urged the international lenders to provide at least a semblance of a carrot to go with their hefty stick. "No nation can endure daily austerity without a light at the end of the tunnel," Mr. Samaras said. Too much pain, headed, "will fuel a social explosion."

8) In Europe, Stagnation as a Way of LifeBy LIZ ALDERMAN and LANDON THOMAS Jr.February 9, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/business/global/after-accord-in-athens-uncertainties-loom-for-europe.html?ref=world

PARIS - For all the struggles that Greece has gone through to satisfy its demanding lenders, Europe's troubles are not going away.

Because of the various, often incremental, steps European officials have taken during the nearly three-year debt difficulties that began in Greece, the crisis fever has cooled considerably in recent months - including fears that the euro currency union might suddenly fall apart.

But crisis has given way to a grinding reality for Europe: economic stagnation and even, for much of the Continent, the specter of another downturn less than three years after the last recession ended.

Greek leaders on Thursday agreed to a new set of tough austerity measures, in hopes of receiving a new 130 billion-euro bailout package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, aimed at avoiding a debt default in March. That agreement, though, is in some ways a microcosm of Europe's broader quandary, as similar measures are being embraced by other debt-saddled countries in the euro currency union, including Portugal and Ireland.

Many analysts say the belt-tightening can only push those and other nations further into recession, sap the economies of their European trading partners and do little to address the systemic weaknesses plaguing Europe's banks.

"We take one problem off the table for the moment," Carl B. Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, N.Y., said. "That still leaves us having to deal with the dramatic destruction of wealth that has taken place."

Markets have recently taken a more optimistic view of Italy and Spain - the nations where Greek "contagion" has long been feared to strike next, with even more dire regional consequences. Lately, both governments' borrowing costs have come down to more sustainable levels. Under new political leadership, Rome and Madrid are proceeding with restructuring plans intended not just to reduce high debts and deficits but also to lay the foundation for eventually restoring economic growth.

Investors have also been reassured by the European Central Bank's moves to lower interest rates and open the money taps to protect banks from being pushed to the wall.

"I don't see what's on the horizon that would derail this," said Stefan Schneider, the chief international economist at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. "We are no longer in an environment where markets want to pick off Greece and move onto the next country."

For Nicolas Véron, senior fellow at the Breugel Economic Research Institute in Brussels, that means Europe may be able to breathe easier, at least for a while. "It doesn't mean the problems are solved," he said. "But it removes some of the short-term pressure, and hopefully can create a virtuous circle."

It all depends, though, on how the euro zone's economy fares in the months and years ahead. Investors who once criticized countries for not embracing enough austerity to mend tattered balance sheets have recently started to acknowledge that too much austerity is squeezing growth - making it harder, rather than easier, to pay back debts.

And the growth divide that already existed between wealthy northern countries and those along the southern rim has widened even more in the last year, while those toiling in what is likely to be a drawn-out recession - Greece and Portugal especially - seem to be creating a third, ultraslow zone in the euro zone.

Those weak economies will weigh on Europe for years to come. They are already helping to weaken growth in Germany and once-robust countries like France, both of which are seeing their exports to other European countries suffer.

And if Greece were eventually to see no exit from its downward spiral and decide that it had no choice but to quit the euro zone - something analysts still do not rule out, even if Athens gets this near-term bailout - all bets are off.

"There would be contagion all over again if there is renewed talk of a Greek exit," Mr. Véron said. "This will be a big theme to watch out for in the coming months."

Serious doubts remain over Greece's ability to revive its economy and generate enough growth even to reach the goal of reducing its debt load to 120 percent of its annual economic output in 2020 - a target stipulated by the European Union and the monetary fund.

Greece's debt was more than 159 percent of gross domestic product in last year's third quarter, according to the most recent data from Eurostat, the European Union's statistical agency. And Greek unemployment hit 21 percent in November, while industrial production plummeted 11 percent in December.

And while Greece will benefit from a debt revamping that reduces its interest rate burden in the years ahead, it is unclear how a country that has always depended on a state sector to help spur demand will be able to grow with its main economic engine effectively shackled by the budget cuts Athens is now promising.

Greece has a poor record of keeping its promises so far, raising the risk that it will not be able to meet the most recent conditions either.

"At the bottom of all this Greece still has to deliver," Mr. Weinberg said. "As we saw with the first package, delivering the legislation doesn't necessarily deliver the performance. Greece could be out of compliance very quickly."

What's more, the eventual terms of Greece's bailout deal could lead to a new set of regional uncertainties.

So far, the European Central Bank is resisting calls to help secure Greece's bailout by sending the profit from any of its Greek bond holdings toward a reduction of the nation's debt. But if the central bank caves, Ireland, Portugal and the other countries that have received crisis bailouts might ask for the same treatment.

As part of Greece's bailout deal, moreover, banks may agree to take up to a 70 percent loss on their holdings of Greek bonds. That is something Ireland and Portugal have said they want to avoid demanding of their own private creditors, so as not to frighten off investors when those countries eventually start borrowing in international markets again.

But that stance is not so popular with citizens. Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, said this week that, unlike the Greeks, he had no plans to press losses on banks holding Irish sovereign debt. Such talk has inflamed many Irish taxpayers, who have had to shoulder the banks' bad debts.

If Ireland asked for write-offs from lenders like those for Greece, it could pave the way for similar demands from Portugal and perhaps larger debtor countries like Spain and Italy.

"The Pandora's box has been opened for Ireland and Portugal," and possibly for other countries, Mr. Weinberg said. "We don't know where this goes."

9) Amid Protesters' Disruptions, City Board Votes to Close 18 Schools and Truncate 5"Some of the members of the panel, who sat on the stage, wore headphones so they could hear the testimony of the speakers who stayed to be heard at the microphone. Most of the speakers opposed the closings, but a few parents urged the city to open new and better schools."By Anna M. PhillipsFebruary 10, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/02/10/amid-protesters-disruptions-city-board-votes-to-close-18-schools-and-truncate-5/?ref=nyregion

A city board voted on Thursday night to close 18 schools and eliminate the middle school grades at five others, citing poor performance.

The decision drew howls of opposition from hundreds of teachers' union members, parents and students, who gathered in the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High School along with a group that was inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Panel for Educational Policy, a board that replaced the city's Board of Education, determined that the schools' test scores, graduation rates and leadership failings were too severe to merit keeping them open. Among them were nine schools opened during Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's tenure.

The newest of those schools, the General D. Chappie James Elementary School of Science in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was opened in 2008 to replace a school that was being closed.

On the other end of the spectrum, the oldest school, Public School 19 Roberto Clemente in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, opened in 1910. The panel also voted to approve the location of 16 new schools that will take the place of those that are closed, as well as the expansion of four other schools.

The panel meeting has become an annual spectacle that draws hundreds of protesters and vigorous union opposition. Though the crowd appeared to be a bit lighter this year, and fewer people had signed up to speak, the involvement of the protest group, which calls itself Occupy the Department of Education, contributed to an atmosphere that was more chaotic than usual. There was a heavy police presence at the event, but no immediate reports of arrests.

The meeting, as in years past, was expected to go on for hours, with the panel's votes not expected until possibly early on Friday. But two hours into the meeting the 2,500-seat auditorium began to empty out, as the Occupy members reacted to an unconfirmed report that the police were about to make arrests, and parents and students gave up on trying to speak.

Up to that point, the meeting had been a scene of loud chanting and political theater. As parents, teachers and others stepped up to a microphone to urge the panel members to save their schools, the protesters engaged in a practice called "people's mic," where what one person says is repeated throughout the room.

At points, it was as if several meetings were going on at once, all of them confused and cacophonous, with sound spilling over from one group to the next.

Some of the members of the panel, who sat on the stage, wore headphones so they could hear the testimony of the speakers who stayed to be heard at the microphone. Most of the speakers opposed the closings, but a few parents urged the city to open new and better schools.

The panel is controlled by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who appoints a majority of its 13 members. In the history of the panel, it has never voted to reject a school closing proposal, a fact that has fueled deep resentment from advocacy groups and the city's teachers' union, who claim the panel is effectively a rubber stamp for the mayor's policies.

That history held true, with all the mayor's appointees approving the proposals, while the representatives from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx dissented.

The Staten Island representative voted for the closings, except for the school in her borough, P.S. 14.

The teachers' union had planned to hold its own meeting at a nearby public school, but at the last minute it abandoned that plan and brought its supporters into the auditorium, where the Occupy supporters had already booed the schools chancellor, Dennis M. Walcott, and begun a series of chants. The group has been showing up recently at Education Department events.

On Wednesday two schools that were on the list to be closed were granted a reprieve. Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing Arts in Manhattan will keep its middle-school grades and get a new principal. Knowledge and Power Preparatory Academy VII in Brooklyn will remain open under its current principal, who arrived in the fall.

"While these two schools continue to struggle, what we learned is that they are also poised to quickly improve," Mr. Walcott said in a statement.

Since the mayor was granted control of the system, in 2002, the city has closed 117 schools, many of them large high schools, and opened numerous small schools in their place.

On Wednesday, the city received a report from its Independent Budget Office suggesting that high schools on the closing list enroll a higher percentage of poor students and those with disabilities or who do not speak English than do high schools throughout the city.

The report also claimed that the schools the city planned to close had more students who arrived already performing below their grade level.

City officials disputed the data and said the Independent Budget Office should have given them more time to respond. In a letter to the budget office's director, Ronnie Lowenstein, the Education Department's general counsel, Michael Best, wrote that there were "significant mistakes in the data analysis."

Although the panel has now voted to close the schools, most will remain open for several more years but will not accept new students. As older students graduate and move on, the schools will shrink, until they finally close.

An earlier version of this post did not note that the Staten Island representative voted No on the proposal to close a school in her borough.

Anna M. Phillips is a member of the SchoolBook staff. Follow her on Twitter @annamphillips.

Lately inequality has re-entered the national conversation. Occupy Wall Street gave the issue visibility, while the Congressional Budget Office supplied hard data on the widening income gap. And the myth of a classless society has been exposed: Among rich countries, America stands out as the place where economic and social status is most likely to be inherited.

So you knew what was going to happen next. Suddenly, conservatives are telling us that it's not really about money; it's about morals. Never mind wage stagnation and all that, the real problem is the collapse of working-class family values, which is somehow the fault of liberals.

But is it really all about morals? No, it's mainly about money.

To be fair, the new book at the heart of the conservative pushback, Charles Murray's "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010," does highlight some striking trends. Among white Americans with a high school education or less, marriage rates and male labor force participation are down, while births out of wedlock are up. Clearly, white working-class society has changed in ways that don't sound good.

But the first question one should ask is: Are things really that bad on the values front?

Mr. Murray and other conservatives often seem to assume that the decline of the traditional family has terrible implications for society as a whole. This is, of course, a longstanding position. Reading Mr. Murray, I found myself thinking about an earlier diatribe, Gertrude Himmelfarb's 1996 book, "The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values," which covered much of the same ground, claimed that our society was unraveling and predicted further unraveling as the Victorian virtues continued to erode.

Yet the truth is that some indicators of social dysfunction have improved dramatically even as traditional families continue to lose ground. As far as I can tell, Mr. Murray never mentions either the plunge in teenage pregnancies among all racial groups since 1990 or the 60 percent decline in violent crime since the mid-90s. Could it be that traditional families aren't as crucial to social cohesion as advertised?

Still, something is clearly happening to the traditional working-class family. The question is what. And it is, frankly, amazing how quickly and blithely conservatives dismiss the seemingly obvious answer: A drastic reduction in the work opportunities available to less-educated men.

Most of the numbers you see about income trends in America focus on households rather than individuals, which makes sense for some purposes. But when you see a modest rise in incomes for the lower tiers of the income distribution, you have to realize that all - yes, all - of this rise comes from the women, both because more women are in the paid labor force and because women's wages aren't as much below male wages as they used to be.

For lower-education working men, however, it has been all negative. Adjusted for inflation, entry-level wages of male high school graduates have fallen 23 percent since 1973. Meanwhile, employment benefits have collapsed. In 1980, 65 percent of recent high-school graduates working in the private sector had health benefits, but, by 2009, that was down to 29 percent.

So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits. Yet somehow we're supposed to be surprised that such men have become less likely to participate in the work force or get married, and conclude that there must have been some mysterious moral collapse caused by snooty liberals. And Mr. Murray also tells us that working-class marriages, when they do happen, have become less happy; strange to say, money problems will do that.

One more thought: The real winner in this controversy is the distinguished sociologist William Julius Wilson.

Back in 1996, the same year Ms. Himmelfarb was lamenting our moral collapse, Mr. Wilson published "When Work Disappears: The New World of the Urban Poor," in which he argued that much of the social disruption among African-Americans popularly attributed to collapsing values was actually caused by a lack of blue-collar jobs in urban areas. If he was right, you would expect something similar to happen if another social group - say, working-class whites - experienced a comparable loss of economic opportunity. And so it has.

So we should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren't as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe - and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America's working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause.

11) For Sellers, High End Is HotBy MARC SANTORAFebruary 10, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/realestate/for-sellers-the-high-end-is-hot.html?hp

WHILE the economy remains stubbornly sluggish and home sales nationwide continue to sag, Manhattan's real estate market has largely stabilized, with apartments in some neighborhoods selling for prices not seen since the headiest days of the boom.

But on the road to recovery, one segment of the market has outpaced the rest: ultraluxury, which analysts roughly define as properties costing $7 million and up. At these lofty heights, there was only the slightest of hiccups after the crash, and in the ensuing years, values have soared, with some apartments doubling in price.

Normally, that news would mean rising prices in every other segment of the market, from the tiniest starter studios to family-size four-bedroom co-ops. But that is not happening, even with interest rates at record lows and prices considered reasonable by Manhattan standards.

"There is a greater disconnect between the very top of the market and everything else than I have ever seen in my 25 years in the business," said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel.

Part of the reason for this, brokers and analysts say, is that the wealthiest buyers are immune to practical matters like stricter lending standards and shrunken Wall Street bonuses.

In the last three years there has also been a dry spell in new construction, and for those with money to burn, the limited inventory has stoked demand. And with New York now seen as a refuge during uncertain times, international buyers are helping to drive the prices ever higher.

"Most people would say that the top end of the market is bulletproof," said Pamela Liebman, the president of the Corcoran Group, "and that buyers at this end don't have the same sensitivities as the rest of the market and their confidence does not wane. There is a reason that Hermès has a waiting list for belts and bags."

Defining ultraluxury is not an exact science.

"When I started," Mr. Miller said, " 'luxury' meant the building had a doorman. Now, because luxury has become generic, they have had to add the adjective ultra."

Generally, brokers agree that anything priced above $7 million fits the bill. Mr. Miller compared the sales at the top 5 percent of the market - apartments priced over $6 million - with those at the bottom 5 percent - apartments priced below $300,000 - over the last decade. After adjusting for inflation, he found that the value gap between the most and the least expensive properties has never been wider.

"It seems to be part of a wider global phenomenon, where there is an ever greater concentration of wealth at the upper echelons," he said.

Many moderately priced properties sold last year for roughly the same price that they brought from 2006 to 2008. Mr. Miller described a one-bedroom at 360 East 72nd Street as typical. The owners paid $770,000 for it in 2006 and sold it last year for $750,000, about a 2 percent loss. Meanwhile, a four-bedroom at 151 East 58th Street, bought in 2005 for $13 million, sold five years later for $17.75 million, a 36 percent profit.

The most expensive apartments constitute only a fraction of the market, but the impact of their rising value is greater than just the eye-popping sums they command. Along with the surge in demand for lavish prewar co-ops, the success of developments like Superior Ink in Greenwich Village, and 15 Central Park West and the Laureate on the Upper West Side, makes it all the more likely that future developers will choose luxury over affordability.

In the 1980s, it was rental high-rises like those dotting the Upper East Side that appealed to developers. While they often offered some good-sized apartments, they were designed to accommodate as many apartments as possible. Operating under a different mindset, developers of those buildings often put fitness centers on the top floor, whereas that space now would be reserved for a penthouse getting top dollar.

The condos that have opened in the last few years often have larger apartments and fewer units. They are aimed squarely at the rich, perhaps none more so than the new Extell development at 157th West 57th Street, called One57.

When it opens next year, it will be the city's tallest residential building, at 90 stories, and the most expensive, with the cheapest unit reportedly at $7 million. Fewer than 100 residences will be available.

New York has always had its share of trophy properties, but Ms. Liebman identified the $45 million sale in 2003 of an apartment in the Time Warner Center as the one that ushered prices into the stratosphere. Whereas eight-figure deals were a rarity as recently as five years ago, hardly a week went by last year without a sale over $10 million. The gilt-edged properties were spread across the city, including penthouses in TriBeCa and Union Square, co-ops on the East Side and new condos on the West Side.

When the banker Sanford I. Weill sold an apartment at 15 Central Park West late last year with an asking price of $88 million - more than $13,000 per square foot - real estate executives said the deal signaled another leap in the kinds of prices that are possible. Mr. Weill very likely doubled his 2007 investment of $43,687,751.

The impact was immediate. For instance the reported asking price for the penthouse at One57, first set at $90 million, soon neared $115 million. Still, at $7,000 per square foot, a certain kind of shopper might consider it a bargain.

"Even if you are spending $40 million, it is comforting to know that there are other people spending that kind of money as well," said Kelly Kennedy Mack, the president of the Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, who has been a consultant to top-selling Manhattan developments including One57. "

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan government officials who traveled to the snowbound village where seven children and a young adult reportedly were killed in a NATO airstrike this week said that the bombing was based on incorrect information.

The officials said that after talking to local residents and seeing the area, they concluded that an informer had misled the French troops who control the area.

The airstrike took place on Wednesday in the village of Geyaba in the eastern Afghan province of Kapisa. Seven boys under 14 and an 18-year-old were killed in the attack, according to Abdul Mubin Safi, the administrative director of Kapisa Province. They were herding sheep less than half a mile from their homes when the bombing happened.

NATO representatives and Afghan officials traveled to the area by helicopter to investigate and returned Friday, said Maj. Jason Waggoner, a NATO spokesman. He said there was no word yet from NATO officials on the findings of the joint Afghan-NATO team.

One member of the team, Mohammad Hussain Khan Sanjani, the chairman of the provincial council who was reached by telephone in Kapisa, said that after talking with people in the village, it seemed that misinformation had been passed to NATO forces.

"These people are involved in animal husbandry, they own sheep and goats, and their children went out to feed the animals behind their village under some oak trees," Mr. Sanjani said.

"The French troops had a secret report from one of their agents who told them that in that area there were armed men preparing to attack the government and the French soldiers in Kapisa," he said. "We talked to locals and found that the intelligence was wrong and they targeted civilians."

The French soldiers, who are largely responsible for Kapisa Province, have faced stiff resistance from the insurgents there and in the Sarobi district of neighboring Kabul Province. Eighty-two French soldiers have been killed in combat since 2001, mostly in those two areas.

France's military high command did not respond to requests for comment on the airstrike in Kapisa.

The province is divided ethnically, with some areas heavily Tajik and others Pashtun. The Pashtun areas have had a strong insurgent presence that includes both Taliban fighters and fighters loyal to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an insurgent leader.

The Najrab district, where the airstrike occurred, is mixed with Tajiks, Pashtuns and Pashai, and while local officials said it was not held by insurgents, their presence could not be ruled out since Najrab is adjacent to less stable districts.

"The area is not influenced by the Taliban, but there was some sort of illegal weapon smuggling," said Abdul Saboor Wafa, the Kapisa governor's chief of staff.

Civilian casualties have caused serious tensions between the United States-led military coalition and the Afghan government. Civilian deaths caused by NATO and Afghan forces dropped last year, although the number of civilians killed by airstrikes that were intended to hit insurgents rose, to 187, the United Nations has reported.

President Hamid Karzai condemned the loss of life in Kapisa and blamed a NATO airstrike in a statement on Thursday.

13) A Confused Nuclear Cleanup"A day laborer wiping down windows at an abandoned school nearby shrugged at the work crew's haphazard approach. 'We are all amateurs,' he said. 'Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation.'"By HIROKO TABUCHIFebruary 10, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/business/global/after-fukushima-disaster-a-confused-effort-at-cleanup.html?ref=world

IITATE, Japan - As 500 workers in hazmat suits and respirator masks fanned out to decontaminate this village 20 miles from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, their confusion was apparent.

"Dig five centimeters or 10 centimeters deep here?" a site supervisor asked his colleagues, pointing to a patch of radioactive topsoil to be removed. He then gestured across the village square toward the community center. "Isn't that going to be demolished? Shall we decontaminate it or not?"

A day laborer wiping down windows at an abandoned school nearby shrugged at the work crew's haphazard approach. "We are all amateurs," he said. "Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation."

Nobody may really know how. But that has not deterred the Japanese government from starting to hand out an initial $13 billion in contracts meant to rehabilitate the more than 8,000-square-mile region most exposed to radioactive fallout - an area nearly as big as New Jersey. The main goal is to enable the return of many of the 80,000 or more displaced people nearest the site of last March's nuclear disaster, including the 6,500 villagers of Iitate.

It is far from clear, though, that the unproved cleanup methods will be effective.

Even more disturbing to critics of the decontamination program is the fact that the government awarded the first contracts to three giant construction companies - corporations that have no more expertise in radiation cleanup than anyone else does, but that profited hugely from Japan's previous embrace of nuclear power.

It was these same three companies that helped build 45 of Japan's 54 nuclear plants - including the reactor buildings and other plants at Fukushima Daiichi that could not withstand the tsunami that caused a catastrophic failure - according to data from Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, a watchdog group.

One of them, the Taisei Corporation, leads the consortium that sent out the workers now tramping around Iitate in hazmat suits. Consortiums led by Taisei and the other two big companies - Obayashi and Kajima - among them received contracts for the government's first 12 pilot decontamination projects, totaling about $93 million.

"It's a scam," said Kiyoshi Sakurai, a critic of the nuclear industry and a former researcher at a forerunner to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, which is overseeing this phase of decontamination. "Decontamination is becoming big business."

The cleanup contracts, Mr. Sakurai and other critics contend, are emblematic of the too-cozy ties they say have long existed between the nuclear industry and government.

"The Japanese nuclear industry is run so that the more you fail, the more money you receive," Mr. Sakurai said.

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said the construction giants would not necessarily receive the bulk of the future work, which will be contracted out by the Environment Ministry. Company officials, however, have indicated they expected to continue serving as primary contractors.

"We are building expertise as we work," said Fumiyasu Hirai, a Taisei spokesman. "It is a process of trial and error, but we are well-equipped for the job."

Kajima and Obayashi said they could not comment on the projects under way.

An Environment Ministry official, Katsumasa Seimaru, said that big construction companies were best equipped to gather the necessary manpower, oversee large-scale projects like decontaminating highways and mountains, and properly protect and monitor radiation exposure among the cleanup workers.

"Whether you promoted nuclear or not beforehand isn't as important as what you can do to help with the cleanup," Mr. Seimaru said.

Other construction companies are scrambling to get in on the action. In late January, the Maeda Corporation, another general contractor, won a cleanup contract, this one awarded by the Environment Ministry. Maeda bid to take the job for less than half the expected costs, an apparent loss-leader maneuver to get a foot in the door that has drawn complaints from other bidders, including Taisei.

Early this month, a city just outside the exclusion zone, Minamisoma, said that it would also allocate 40 billion yen ($525 million) worth of decontamination projects to groups led by national general contractors. Whatever the controversy, there is no question Japan is undertaking a crucial task. The endeavor is meant to go far beyond the partial cleanup that followed the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, which left a 19-mile radius around the plant that, even a quarter-century later, remains largely off limits.

But there is little consensus on what cleanup methods might prove effective in Japan. Radioactive particles are easily carried by wind and rain, and could recontaminate towns and cities even after a cleanup crew has passed through, experts say.

"No experts yet exist in decontamination, and there is no reason why the state should pay big money to big construction companies," said Yoichi Tao, a visiting professor in physics at Kogakuin University who is helping Iitate villagers test decontamination methods on their own. He is also monitoring the effectiveness of the energy agency's decontamination projects.

Though big companies have won the main contracts so far, the actual cleanup - essentially a simple but tedious task of scrubbing and digging - is being carried out by numerous subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, who in turn rely on untrained casual laborers to do the dirtiest decontamination work.

This tiered structure, in which fees are siphoned off and wages dwindle each step down the ladder, follows the familiar pattern of Japan's nuclear and construction industries.

On the Iitate project, most of the workers come from elsewhere. The self-described amateur wiping down the school windows, who would identify himself only as Shibata, said he was an autoworker by trade who resided about 160 miles away, just east of Tokyo in Chiba. He said he had jumped at news that there was "decent-paying work but not so dangerous" in Fukushima.

Mr. Shibata said he was working two four-hour shifts a day and was being put up in a local spa resort. Although he and other workers declined to discuss their wages, local news media have reported that the pay for decontamination work can reach about 25,000 yen, or around $325 a day.

He spoke as he wiped a window with a paper towel. "One swipe per towel, or the radioactive particles just get spread around," he said. "Not that you can see the radiation at all."

Indeed. A similar cleanup project at the Iitate community center last fall, undertaken by the local government, was unable to reduce the radiation to safe levels.

The pilot projects led by Taisei and the other contractors have already hit snags. The government, for example, failed to anticipate communities' reluctance to store tons of soil scraped from contaminated yards and fields.

Some critics, meanwhile, have argued that local companies and governments could perform the cleanup work for much less money, while creating local jobs.

Some Iitate villagers have enlisted the help of university experts to take matters into their own hands. Their experiments, they say, suggest that decontamination must start on the forested mountains that cover three-quarters of Iitate's land area.

"Even if they clean up our homes, the radiation will sweep down from the mountains again and recontaminate everything," said Muneo Kanno, a 60-year-old farmer. Like many other residents of Iitate, he stayed in the village for more than a month after the disaster, unaware that the radioactive plumes had reached Iitate.

Mr. Kanno fled the village in May but returns on weekends to try different decontamination methods. Recently he took Mr. Tao, the visiting physicist, to a nearby mountain to test the effectiveness of removing dead leaves from the ground to reduce radiation levels.

There is no public financing for their work, which is supported by donations and the volunteer efforts of the villagers themselves. On a recent morning, about a dozen volunteers, some as old as 70, scrambled up a snowy mountainside to rake leaves into cloth sacks, wearing only regular clothes and surgical masks.

"We know the land here far better than the construction companies do," Mr. Kanno said. "We are afraid that the money is just disappearing into thin air."

14) Across the Country, Looking for the Recovery"Holly Kiluk, 47, has become used to the seasonal ebbs of her husband's job as an asphalt worker and feels her family is 'one of the few that are getting by,' in her town of Ashby, Mass., near the New Hampshire line northwest of Boston. She has made it work in part by bargain hunting. She buys men's sweatshirts that can perform double duty - she shares them with her grandson who lives with her. And when gas prices rose, she moved her five children to a school closer to home. Ms. Kiluk's daughter, Katie, said that few of her friends have found well-paying jobs, and many have joined the military instead. And few of those returning from Iraq have landed a job. For the most part, Ms. Kiluk blames President Obama for the economic stagnation. 'I don't think he's helped us. I think he picked up a mess and made it bigger,' she said, adding that she was particularly disappointed by the stimulus. 'It was all a gimmick, all a farce.' Still, she has little faith in the Republican Party, either. 'Every candidate wants to cut this, cut that,' she said. 'There isn't anything I agree with, with the people running now. I wish it were different.'"By JENNIFER MEDINAFebruary 11, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/us/across-the-country-looking-for-the-economic-recovery.html?ref=us

MORENO VALLEY, Calif. - Tell people here that the economy is getting better and they look quizzical. Perhaps the numbers say so, but they can hardly see it in their own lives.

A decade ago, this was a place where the middle class came to nurture its dreams - buying a house, enrolling children in a decent public school and shopping at any one of the dozens of malls dotting the landscape. But the bust hit hard here. This city - and the towns that surround it in Riverside County - became an emblem of the housing foreclosure crisis with one of the highest unemployment rates in the state.

The numbers are improving now, though. The foreclosures have subsided. Unemployment has fallen to 14.4 percent last month from 17 percent in 2010. But still, it is hard to detect a sense of optimism.

Instead, a feeling of frustrated hope could be heard in dozens of interviews here and in other towns like it across the country - in north-central Massachusetts, Belvidere, Ill., and Seattle. Each place has its own signs of an improving economy - a few new construction sites, even a batch of job openings. And heaven knows, people want to be optimistic. But most of them, for the most part, are not feeling it yet.

"I don't see anybody doing anything for our country or our situation that is making much of a difference," said Mark Bouldin, 36, who once made a decent living here in the suburban sprawl about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, working construction, renovating homes and doing small repairs. "I've looked for work every single day, and there's just nothing."

In 2009, with work drying up, he closed shop. Now, he is in school to become a minister at his church. The only thing that keeps him going, he said, is a belief in God. "Everybody is fighting for the little scraps of whatever they can get," he said.

Even in places where fresh jobs have sprouted, some stubborn gloom persists.

Take Belvidere, an old manufacturing town not far from the Wisconsin border, where unemployment had reached 17.4 percent, among the highest in Illinois. The Chrysler assembly plant in Belvidere announced this month that it would hire 1,800 workers by summer to support the production of a new model. One local newspaper said it was "the biggest and best news we've had in the Rock River Valley in years, perhaps ever."

Today the factory employs more than 2,700 people, up from just 200 when the company emerged from bankruptcy in 2009. People are flowing in from all over the region - the company said it had to stop accepting applications after more than 7,500 were submitted for the new positions.

Donald Hardt, 60, has been out of work since August, when he was laid off by a machine products supplier in Wisconsin because of downsizing. On Wednesday, Mr. Hardt was at the Chrysler plant to fill out an application.

But other than Chrysler's good news, there are not many signs of improvement in the area.

"I've been looking every day since August," Mr. Hardt said. "I've been seeing minimum-wage jobs, but you can't make a living on minimum wage."

In so many ways, the sluggish economy permanently changed people's lives and attitudes.

Holly Kiluk, 47, has become used to the seasonal ebbs of her husband's job as an asphalt worker and feels her family is "one of the few that are getting by," in her town of Ashby, Mass., near the New Hampshire line northwest of Boston. She has made it work in part by bargain hunting. She buys men's sweatshirts that can perform double duty - she shares them with her grandson who lives with her. And when gas prices rose, she moved her five children to a school closer to home.

Ms. Kiluk's daughter, Katie, said that few of her friends have found well-paying jobs, and many have joined the military instead. And few of those returning from Iraq have landed a job.

For the most part, Ms. Kiluk blames President Obama for the economic stagnation. "I don't think he's helped us. I think he picked up a mess and made it bigger," she said, adding that she was particularly disappointed by the stimulus. "It was all a gimmick, all a farce."

Still, she has little faith in the Republican Party, either.

"Every candidate wants to cut this, cut that," she said. "There isn't anything I agree with, with the people running now. I wish it were different."

For many of those interviewed, politics seemed almost beside the point. While some faulted the president, others felt he had not gotten enough credit for improving the sluggish economy, even if those improvements have yet to trickle down to their own lives. Even those who hope to elect a Republican to the White House this fall say they doubt much will change.

"I don't know who to blame and I don't know if it much matters," said Kim Barron, 48, of Moreno Valley.

Ms. Barron and her husband once made a living buying and fixing up used cars. But two years ago the work vanished and it got too expensive to gas up the cars. Lately, her only work has come with occasional odd jobs. "I pray and look for work every day, but I just don't see it coming to me or anyone I know."

She encourages her daughter to move to Colorado, where her sister has been able to keep a steady job in a medical office.

"Maybe things are better anywhere else outside of here," she said.

In Seattle, things have been a bit better for Kevin Long, who calls himself "fallout of the great recession." After working as an executive for Washington Mutual for years, he lost his job soon after Chase took over the bank.

Mr. Long was unemployed for a year, but with plenty of savings he viewed the time as "terrific," as he spent more time with his children.

Mr. Long was a self-proclaimed soccer dad when he found a job as the executive director of Seattle United, a nonprofit youth soccer club.

"I feel that things are starting to turn a corner," he said, but he had a difficult time pinpointing the evidence. "I don't know if it's tangible."

ATHENS - Greece's place in Europe once again hung in the balance on Friday, as the fragile interim coalition of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos was plunged into turmoil and European leaders expressed doubts about the country's commitment to remaking its economy and achieving solvency.

After a wave of defections from his cabinet, and as protests turned violent in Athens amid a general strike, Mr. Papademos told lawmakers that they must approve new austerity measures demanded by Greece's creditors - including a 22 percent cut in the benchmark minimum wage and public-sector layoffs - or the country would suffer a disorderly default with social dislocation and would eventually leave the euro zone.

After a five-hour meeting, the cabinet approved the package, sending it on to Parliament for final approval, perhaps as early as Sunday.

The prime minister's comments kicked off what is expected to be a long and chaotic weekend of brinkmanship, with Greek politicians fighting for their survival in the face of unpopular austerity measures and European leaders demanding more concessions in a climate of growing urgency - and mistrust - between Greece and its foreign lenders.

Greece's so-called troika of foreign lenders - the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund - has demanded sweeping austerity measures in exchange for $170 billion in bailout money that Greece needs in order to avert default. The troika has also made passage of the measures a condition for sealing a deal in which private creditors will take voluntary losses of up to 70 percent of Greek debt.

But nearly two years after Greece's first bailout, Athens and its lenders are at a dangerous impasse. Europe has lost confidence that the Greek government has the will or capacity to follow through on its commitments to structural changes. Greeks, whose standard of living is dropping precipitously with no end in sight, have lost confidence that the bailout will actually save the country from default.

With so many variables and so little time, some experts said that almost any outcome was possible, from disorderly default and chaos to a new agreement and at least temporary calm. "Greece defaulting is probably just as likely to happen as a result of an accident as an act of will," said Platon Tinios, an economist at the University of Piraeus. "If you are skating at the edge of a precipice, the slightest push could push you over."

For now, both sides appear to lack a viable Plan B. Behind closed doors in Brussels at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Thursday, the lack of trust was evident - and may have put the entire bailout at risk.

The ministers had been expected to approve with little fuss the austerity package negotiated among Greek politicians. Instead, the European ministers made it plain that they did not believe the figures provided by Greece. They jolted Athens by insisting that it find an additional $428 million in savings - to make up for a shortfall created by the refusal of political leaders to slash supplemental pensions - before their next meeting, expected on Wednesday.

In one of several tough exchanges, the Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, was taken to task by the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, for having failed to begin the required negotiations with labor unions over the reduction in the minimum wage. At some point in the evening, an open television microphone recorded a markedly different exchange between Mr. Schäuble and the finance minister of Portugal, which faces an austerity-driven economic slump similar to Greece's.

If Portugal needed to ease its bailout terms, "we would be ready to do it," Mr. Schäuble said in a friendly conversation broadcast on a private Portuguese network, TVI. "That's much appreciated," replied his counterpart from Portugal, Vitor Gaspar.

There are also tensions within the troika. Because of Greece's failure to meet budget targets amid a recession aggravated by the troika-imposed austerity regimen, its lenders no longer believe the $170 billion bailout will be enough. But the I.M.F. does not want to provide extra financing, because its analysts do not believe Greece's debt load is sustainable.

European leaders have been reluctant to come up with more money, but are expected to do so in the end - but not before pushing Greece to the edge, people familiar with the talks said.

The measures are understandably unpopular in Greece, where politicians are positioning themselves for elections that could be held as soon as April, although two of the three parties in the coalition have said they want to delay them until 2013.

Adding to the anxiety surrounding the negotiations, on Friday the leader of the smallest of the three parties in the coalition said he would vote against the austerity package Greek leaders agreed to Thursday after marathon negotiations. "The creditors are asking for 40 years of submission," said Georgios Karatzaferis, who heads the right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally. "Greece will not give itself up."

Mr. Karatzaferis's party, however, controls only 16 seats in Parliament, not enough to scuttle the deal if most of the other members of the coalition, legislators in the Socialist and New Democracy parties, support it. Several coalition legislators have indicated that they object to certain measures - chiefly wage cuts - and may vote against them but it would take a huge backbench rebellion for the vote to fail as the two largest parties have 236 seats in the 300-member house.

Mr. Karatzaferis called on Mr. Papademos to reshuffle his cabinet and replace Socialist ministers with technocrats. He also accused creditors of trying to "deprive Greece of the last trace of national sovereignty" and expressed frustration with German officials, who have taken a hard line in the negotiations.

"Greece cannot survive outside the E.U.," he said, "but it can do without a German jackboot."

On Friday, Mr. Papademos told his cabinet that a disorderly default would condemn the country to a "disastrous ordeal."

"It would create conditions of uncontrolled economic chaos and a social explosion," he said. "The state would be unable to pay wages and pensions and cover basic operational costs such as those of hospitals and schools."

Imports of basic goods like medicines and fuel would become problematic and businesses would close en masse. "The living standard of Greeks would collapse, and the country would be dragged into a spiral of recession, instability, unemployment and misery," he said.

"All these developments would lead, sooner or later, to Greece's exit from the euro zone," he said.

A tumultuous day inside Parliament was matched outside the building, where protesters throwing firebombs clashed with the police and Greek workers joined the second general strike this week in protest against new austerity measures.

16) Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on ItBy BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and ROBERT GEBELOFFPublished: February 11, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?_r=1&hp

LINDSTROM, Minn. — Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are drawing more deeply on that government with each passing year.

Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In Chisago, and across the nation, the government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.

Older people get most of the benefits, primarily through Social Security and Medicare, but aid for the rest of the population has increased about as quickly through programs for the disabled, the unemployed, veterans and children.

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

The expansion of government benefits has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Rick Santorum, who won 57 percent of the vote in Chisago County in the Republican presidential caucuses last week, has warned of “the narcotic of government dependency.” Newt Gingrich has compared the safety net to a spider web. Mitt Romney has said the nation must choose between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.” All the candidates, including Ron Paul, have promised to cut spending and further reduce taxes.

The problem by now is familiar to most. Politicians have expanded the safety net without a commensurate increase in revenues, a primary reason for the government’s annual deficits and mushrooming debt. In 2000, federal and state governments spent about 37 cents on the safety net from every dollar they collected in revenue, according to a New York Times analysis. A decade later, after one Medicare expansion, two recessions and three rounds of tax cuts, spending on the safety net consumed nearly 66 cents of every dollar of revenue.

The recent recession increased dependence on government, and stronger economic growth would reduce demand for programs like unemployment benefits. But the long-term trend is clear. Over the next 25 years, as the population ages and medical costs climb, the budget office projects that benefits programs will grow faster than any other part of government, driving the federal debt to dangerous heights.

Americans are divided about the way forward. Seventy percent of respondents to a recent New York Times poll said the government should raise taxes. Fifty-six percent supported cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Forty-four percent favored both.

Support for spending cuts runs strong in Chisago, where anger at the government helped fuel Mr. Cravaack’s upset victory in 2010 over James L. Oberstar, the Democrat who had represented northeast Minnesota for 36 years.

“Spending like this is simply unsustainable, and it’s time to cut up Washington, D.C.’s credit card,” Mr. Cravaack said in a February speech to the Hibbing Area Chamber of Commerce. “It may hurt now, but it will be absolutely deadly for the next generation — that’s our children and our grandchildren.”

But the reality of life here is that Mr. Gulbranson and many of his neighbors continue to take as much help from the government as they can get. When pressed to choose between paying more and taking less, many people interviewed here hemmed and hawed and said they could not decide. Some were reduced to tears. It is much easier to promise future restraint than to deny present needs.

“How do you tell someone that you deserve to have heart surgery and you can’t?” Mr. Gulbranson said.

He paused.

“You have to help and have compassion as a people, because otherwise you have no society, but financially you can’t destroy yourself. And that is what we’re doing.”

He paused again, unable to resolve the dilemma.

“I feel bad for my children.”

Middle-Class Blues

Mr. Gulbranson has tried several ways to make a living in the storefront he bought from his father in 1979. He ran a gift shop, then shifted to selling jewelry. Nine years ago, he moved the gold scales to the back and bought equipment for screen-printing clothing. Through it all, he has never made more than about $46,000 in a year.

Meanwhile, the cost of life — and of raising five children — has climbed inexorably.

“I used to go out and try to have a meal at Perkins, which is a restaurant here, and get out of the store with $5,” Mr. Gulbranson said. “And now it’s probably up to $10.”

In recent years he has earned so little that he did not pay federal income taxes, although he still paid thousands of dollars toward Medicare and Social Security. The earned-income tax credit is intended to offset those payroll taxes, to encourage people with lower-paying jobs to remain in the work force.

Mr. Gulbranson said the money covered the fees for his children’s sports leagues and the cost of keeping the older ones on the family’s car insurance.

“If we didn’t get these government things, then probably my kids could not participate in some of the sports they do,” he said.

Almost half of all Americans lived in households that received government benefits in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The share climbed from 37.7 percent in 1998 to 44.5 percent in 2006, before the recession, to 48.5 percent in 2010.

The trend reflects the expansion of the safety net. When the earned-income credit was introduced in 1975, eligibility was limited to households making the current equivalent of up to $26,997. In 2010, it was available to families making up to $49,317. The maximum payout, meanwhile, quadrupled on an inflation-adjusted basis.

It also reflects the deterioration of the middle class. Chisago boomed and prospered for decades as working families packed new subdivisions along Interstate 35, which runs up the western edge of the county like a flagpole with its base set firmly in Minneapolis. But recent years have been leaner. Per capita income in Chisago excluding government aid fell 6 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis between 2000 and 2007. Over the next two years, it fell an additional 7 percent. Nationally, per capita income excluding government benefits fell by 3 percent over the same 10 years.

Mr. Gulbranson’s business struggled as other companies, particularly construction firms, stopped ordering logo-emblazoned shirts. In 2009, the family claimed the earned-income credit for the first time on the advice of their accountant, who was claiming it for herself. The share of local families claiming the credit climbed 33 percent between 2000 and 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.

To make extra money, Mr. Gulbranson refereed 40 soccer games on Tuesday and Thursday nights last fall. His wife sold clothes at equestrian events and air-brushed novelties at craft fairs, driving around the country with a one-ton trailer hitched to a 20-foot van.

Their difficulties, Mr. Gulbranson said, have made it hard to imagine asking anyone to pay higher taxes.

“I don’t think most people could bear to pay more,” he said.

Instead, he said he would rather give up the earned-income credit the family now receives and start paying for school lunches for his children.

“I don’t demand that the government does this for me,” he said. “I don’t feel like I need the government.”

How about Social Security? And Medicare? Can he imagine retiring without government help?

“I don’t think so,” he said. “No. I don’t know. Not the way we expect to live as Americans.”

A Starring Role

Bob Kopka and his wife often drive to the American Legion hall in North Branch on Thursday nights, joining the crowd gathered in the basement bar for the weekly meat raffle. Almost everyone present relies on the government to pay for their medical care.

Mr. Kopka, 74, has had three heart procedures in recent years. His wife recently had surgery to remove cataracts from both eyes.

Without Medicare, Mr. Kopka said, the couple could not have paid for the treatments.

“Hell, no,” he said. “No. Never. She would have to go blind.”

And him?

“I’d die.”

Few federal programs are more popular than Medicare, which along with Social Security assures a minimum quality of life for older Americans.

None are more central to the nation’s financial problems. The Congressional Budget Office projects that government spending on medical benefits, even taking into account the cost containment measures in the 2010 health care law, will rise 60 percent over the next decade. Then it will start rising even more quickly. The cost of caring for each beneficiary continues to increase, and the government projects that Medicare enrollment will grow by roughly one-third as baby boomers enter old age.

Spending on medical benefits will account for a larger share of the projected increase in the federal budget over the next decade than any other kind of spending except interest payments on the federal debt.

Medicare’s starring role in the nation’s financial problems is not well understood. Only 22 percent of respondents to the New York Times poll correctly identified Medicare as the fastest-growing benefits program. A greater number of respondents, 27 percent, chose programs for the poor. That category, which includes Medicaid, is slightly larger than Medicare today but is projected to add only half as much to federal spending over the next decade.

Medicare’s financial problems are much worse than Social Security’s. A worker earning average wages still pays enough in Social Security taxes to cover the benefits the worker is likely to receive in retirement, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute. Social Security is still running out of money because the program must also support spouses who do not work and workers who earn lower wages. But Medicare’s situation is even more dire because a worker earning average wages still contributes only $1 in Medicare taxes for every $3 in benefits likely to be received in retirement.

A woman who was 45 in 2010, earning $43,500 a year, will pay taxes that will reach a value of $87,000 by the time she retires, assuming the money is invested at an annual interest rate 2 percentage points above inflation, according to the Urban Institute analysis. But on average, the government will then spend $275,000 on her medical care. The average is somewhat lower for men, because women live longer.

Medicare is often described as an insurance program, but its premiums are not nearly high enough. In simple terms, Americans are getting more than they pay for.

But many older residents in Chisago say this problem belongs to younger generations. They paid what they were told; they want to collect what they were promised.

Some, like the Kopkas, have savings they can tap. Mr. Kopka still owns the landscaping business he started after leaving the Navy in the early 1960s. He and his wife own a three-bedroom home on three acres, valued by the county at $153,700. The mortgage is paid. They hope to pass the house to their children.

Others have nothing else. Barbara Sullivan, 71, moved last year to the apartments above the Chisago County Senior Center in North Branch. Waiting on a recent Friday for the hot lunch, which costs $3.50, she watched roughly 20 people play bingo for prizes including canned soup and Chef Boyardee pasta.

“Most of the seniors around here are struggling to make it,” she said.

She counts herself among them. She lives on $1,220 a month in Social Security benefits and relied on Medicare to pay for an operation in November.

She believes that she is taking more from the government than she paid in taxes. She worries about the consequences for her grandchildren. She said she would like politicians to propose solutions.

“We’re reasonable people,” she said. “We’re not going to say, ‘Give it to me and let my grandchildren suffer.’ I think they underestimate seniors when they think that way.”

But she cannot imagine asking people to pay higher taxes. And as she considered making do with less, she started to cry.

“Without it, I’m not sure how I would live,” she said. “With the check I’m getting from Social Security, it’s a constant struggle on making sure that I pay my rent and have enough left for groceries.

“I haven’t bought a Christmas present, I haven’t bought clothing in the last five years, simply because I can’t afford it.”

Keeping a Promise

Representative Cravaack often says he entered politics to lift the burden of debt from the shoulders of his two sons.

“I vision that I open up their backpacks and I put in a 50-pound rock and zip it back up again,” Mr. Cravaack told the Minnesota Freedom Council in October 2010. “And I say, ‘Sorry, son, you’re going to have to hump this the rest of your life.’ Because that’s exactly what we’re doing to our national debt right now to our children.”

Mr. Cravaack, a 53-year-old Navy veteran and a retired pilot for Northwest Airlines, was grounded by sleep apnea in 2007. He and his wife, an executive at the drug company Novo Nordisk, decided he would stay home with their sons. He soon became the first man to serve as president of the Chisago Lakes Parent Teacher Organization.

In August 2009, while driving the children to North Branch, he heard a talk radio host urging people to protest President Obama’s health care legislation. Mr. Cravaack and about two dozen others spent more than two hours the next day in Mr. Oberstar’s North Branch office before a staff member told them the congressman would not meet them. The rejection convinced Mr. Cravaack that Mr. Oberstar should be replaced. One of the other protesters, a woman who had taken her six children to the office, became Mr. Cravaack’s campaign scheduler.

Two weeks after speaking to the Freedom Council, he beat Mr. Oberstar by 1.6 percentage points, or 4,407 votes. Voters in Chisago, the southern tip of an expansive district, provided the margin of victory.

“We have to break away,” Mr. Cravaack told supporters, “from relying on government to provide all the answers.”

Mr. Cravaack has said he drew unemployment benefits during a furlough from Northwest in the early 1990s. He did not respond to several requests for an interview, nor to an e-mail with questions about his views and about whether his family has drawn on other benefits programs. This account is based on a review of his public statements.

Shortly after arriving in Congress, Mr. Cravaack voted with a vast majority of House Republicans for a plan to remake Medicare by providing money to its beneficiaries to buy private insurance. Senate Democrats have rejected that plan.

But Mr. Cravaack has also consistently said the government should not reduce its largest category of spending — benefits for the current generation of retirees. He also says he does not support cuts for people who will turn 65 over the next decade.

“If you’re 55 years and older, you don’t have to listen to this conversation because we have to keep those promises,” Mr. Cravaack told The Daily Caller last April. “People like myself, 52, if you’re 54 or younger, we’re going to have a conversation.”

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

The government helps Matt Falk and his wife care for their disabled 14-year-old daughter. It pays for extra assistance at school and for trained attendants to stay with her at home while they work. It pays much of the cost of her regular visits to the hospital.

Mr. Falk, 42, would like the government to do less.

“She doesn’t need some of the stuff that we’re doing for her,” said Mr. Falk, who owns a heating and air-conditioning business in North Branch. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing if society can afford it, but given the situation that our society is facing, we just have to say that we can’t offer as much resources at school or that we need to pay a higher premium” for her medical care.

Mr. Falk, who voted for Mr. Cravaack, said he did not want to pay higher taxes and did not want the government to impose higher taxes on anyone else. He said that his family appreciated the government’s help and that living with less would be painful for them and many other families. But he said the government could not continue to operate on borrowed money.

“They’re going to have to reduce benefits,” he said. “We’re going to have to accept it, and we’re going to have to suffer.”

One of the oldest criticisms of democracy is that the people will inevitably drain the treasury by demanding more spending than taxes. The theory is that citizens who get more than they pay for will vote for politicians who promise to increase spending.

But Dean P. Lacy, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation. Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates. And Professor Lacy found that the pattern could not be explained by demographics or social issues.

Chisago has shifted over 30 years from dependably Democratic to reliably Republican. Support for the Republican presidential candidate has increased relative to the national vote in each election since 1984. Senator John McCain won 55 percent of the vote here in 2008.

Residents say social issues play a role, but in recent years concerns about spending and taxes have predominated.

Voters in the North Branch school district have rejected increased financing for local schools in each of the past three years. In 2010, the district switched to a four-day school week, striking Monday from the calendar to save money.

Some of the fiercest advocates for spending cuts have drawn public benefits. Many, like Mr. Falk, have family members who rely on the government. They often cite that personal experience as the reason they want to cut government spending.

Brian Qualley, 49, has a sister who survived a brain tumor but was disabled by its removal. The government pays for her care at an assisted-living facility. Their mother scrapes by on Social Security.

Mr. Qualley said that the government should provide for those who need help, but that too much money was being wasted. Mr. Qualley, who owns a tattoo parlor in Harris, north of North Branch, said some of his customers paid with money from government disability checks.

“They’re getting $300 or $400 tattoos, and they’re wearing nice new Nike shoes that I can’t afford,” he said, looking up from working a complicated design into the left leg of a middle-aged woman. “I guess I shouldn’t say it because it’s my business, but I think a tattoo is a little too extravagant.”

But Mr. Qualley said he did not want to reduce benefits for the current generation of retirees. Rather, he said his own generation should get less, because they have time to prepare. This is a common position among the young and healthy in Chisago.

Mr. Qualley said he was saving some money for retirement, although, he added, “I don’t have a 401(k) or anything like that.”

“I also have a job that I don’t necessarily ever want to — or have to — retire from,” he said.

What if his hands start to shake as he gets older?

“Actually,” he said, the electric needle falling silent in his hand, “it’s my shoulders and neck that bother me most.”

Safety in Numbers

Barbara Nelson has little patience for people who say they will not need government help. She considers herself lucky she has not, and obligated to provide for those who do.

“Catastrophes happen in life,” she said, sitting in a coffee shop in Taylors Falls. “To be so arrogant that you think it won’t happen to you, that somehow you’re going to be one of the special ones, I disagree with that.”

Ms. Nelson, 61, who describes herself as a centrist Democrat, also dismisses the claim that people cannot afford to pay more taxes.

“Anyone who can come into a coffee shop and buy coffee is capable of paying more,” she said. “If someone’s life can be granted, in terms of adequate health care, if that means I give up five cups of coffee a month, that is a small price to pay.”

Gordy Peterson, 62, who has used a wheelchair for 30 years since a construction accident, has reluctantly reached a similar conclusion.

“I’m a conservative,” he said by way of introducing himself. He built his own house before his injury and paid for it in cash. He still thinks the government should operate that way. He never intended to depend on federal aid and said he sometimes felt guilty about it.

But for the last three decades, he has received a regular check from the Social Security disability insurance program, and Medicare has helped to pay his medical bills.

“Here I’m getting money, and everybody is struggling,” he said. “Even though it ain’t no cakewalk for me.”

Mr. Peterson used a workers’ compensation settlement to buy a farm that he managed with his brother-in-law, who is mentally handicapped and also on government disability.

“He was my legs, and we worked it,” Mr. Peterson said.

They grew corn, soybeans and rye, and even kept steers for a while. In good years they earned enough to live on. In bad years they lived on the government’s checks. Life would have been very difficult without them, he said.

Mr. Peterson, an easygoing man who looks down when he thinks and smiles sheepishly when he offers an opinion, looked down after completing the story of his own dependence on the safety net.

“It’s hard to beat up on the government when they’ve been so good to you,” he finally said. “I’ve never really thought about it, I guess.”

Lately, the government has been very good, indeed. The county, with federal financing, bought a corner of Mr. Peterson’s farm to build a new interchange for Interstate 35. He used the money to open a gas station at the edge of the farm in 2008 to serve the traffic that rolls off the new ramp. The business is prospering, and he no longer worries that he will need to depend on Social Security.

“But you can’t take that away,” he said. “My own sister has only Social Security. That’s all. That’s all she’s going to have. And if you take that away from her, Christ, she’d be a street person. I don’t think we can cut them off on that.”

How about higher taxes?

Maybe a little higher, he said. Maybe.

“I’m glad I’m not a politician,” he said. “We’re all going to complain no matter what they do. Nobody wants to put a noose around their own neck.”

16) Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on ItBy BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and ROBERT GEBELOFFPublished: February 11, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?_r=1&hp

LINDSTROM, Minn. — Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are drawing more deeply on that government with each passing year.

Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In Chisago, and across the nation, the government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.

Older people get most of the benefits, primarily through Social Security and Medicare, but aid for the rest of the population has increased about as quickly through programs for the disabled, the unemployed, veterans and children.

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

The expansion of government benefits has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Rick Santorum, who won 57 percent of the vote in Chisago County in the Republican presidential caucuses last week, has warned of “the narcotic of government dependency.” Newt Gingrich has compared the safety net to a spider web. Mitt Romney has said the nation must choose between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.” All the candidates, including Ron Paul, have promised to cut spending and further reduce taxes.

The problem by now is familiar to most. Politicians have expanded the safety net without a commensurate increase in revenues, a primary reason for the government’s annual deficits and mushrooming debt. In 2000, federal and state governments spent about 37 cents on the safety net from every dollar they collected in revenue, according to a New York Times analysis. A decade later, after one Medicare expansion, two recessions and three rounds of tax cuts, spending on the safety net consumed nearly 66 cents of every dollar of revenue.

The recent recession increased dependence on government, and stronger economic growth would reduce demand for programs like unemployment benefits. But the long-term trend is clear. Over the next 25 years, as the population ages and medical costs climb, the budget office projects that benefits programs will grow faster than any other part of government, driving the federal debt to dangerous heights.

Americans are divided about the way forward. Seventy percent of respondents to a recent New York Times poll said the government should raise taxes. Fifty-six percent supported cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Forty-four percent favored both.

Support for spending cuts runs strong in Chisago, where anger at the government helped fuel Mr. Cravaack’s upset victory in 2010 over James L. Oberstar, the Democrat who had represented northeast Minnesota for 36 years.

“Spending like this is simply unsustainable, and it’s time to cut up Washington, D.C.’s credit card,” Mr. Cravaack said in a February speech to the Hibbing Area Chamber of Commerce. “It may hurt now, but it will be absolutely deadly for the next generation — that’s our children and our grandchildren.”

But the reality of life here is that Mr. Gulbranson and many of his neighbors continue to take as much help from the government as they can get. When pressed to choose between paying more and taking less, many people interviewed here hemmed and hawed and said they could not decide. Some were reduced to tears. It is much easier to promise future restraint than to deny present needs.

“How do you tell someone that you deserve to have heart surgery and you can’t?” Mr. Gulbranson said.

He paused.

“You have to help and have compassion as a people, because otherwise you have no society, but financially you can’t destroy yourself. And that is what we’re doing.”

He paused again, unable to resolve the dilemma.

“I feel bad for my children.”

Middle-Class Blues

Mr. Gulbranson has tried several ways to make a living in the storefront he bought from his father in 1979. He ran a gift shop, then shifted to selling jewelry. Nine years ago, he moved the gold scales to the back and bought equipment for screen-printing clothing. Through it all, he has never made more than about $46,000 in a year.

Meanwhile, the cost of life — and of raising five children — has climbed inexorably.

“I used to go out and try to have a meal at Perkins, which is a restaurant here, and get out of the store with $5,” Mr. Gulbranson said. “And now it’s probably up to $10.”

In recent years he has earned so little that he did not pay federal income taxes, although he still paid thousands of dollars toward Medicare and Social Security. The earned-income tax credit is intended to offset those payroll taxes, to encourage people with lower-paying jobs to remain in the work force.

Mr. Gulbranson said the money covered the fees for his children’s sports leagues and the cost of keeping the older ones on the family’s car insurance.

“If we didn’t get these government things, then probably my kids could not participate in some of the sports they do,” he said.

Almost half of all Americans lived in households that received government benefits in 2010, according to the Census Bureau. The share climbed from 37.7 percent in 1998 to 44.5 percent in 2006, before the recession, to 48.5 percent in 2010.

The trend reflects the expansion of the safety net. When the earned-income credit was introduced in 1975, eligibility was limited to households making the current equivalent of up to $26,997. In 2010, it was available to families making up to $49,317. The maximum payout, meanwhile, quadrupled on an inflation-adjusted basis.

It also reflects the deterioration of the middle class. Chisago boomed and prospered for decades as working families packed new subdivisions along Interstate 35, which runs up the western edge of the county like a flagpole with its base set firmly in Minneapolis. But recent years have been leaner. Per capita income in Chisago excluding government aid fell 6 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis between 2000 and 2007. Over the next two years, it fell an additional 7 percent. Nationally, per capita income excluding government benefits fell by 3 percent over the same 10 years.

Mr. Gulbranson’s business struggled as other companies, particularly construction firms, stopped ordering logo-emblazoned shirts. In 2009, the family claimed the earned-income credit for the first time on the advice of their accountant, who was claiming it for herself. The share of local families claiming the credit climbed 33 percent between 2000 and 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.

To make extra money, Mr. Gulbranson refereed 40 soccer games on Tuesday and Thursday nights last fall. His wife sold clothes at equestrian events and air-brushed novelties at craft fairs, driving around the country with a one-ton trailer hitched to a 20-foot van.

Their difficulties, Mr. Gulbranson said, have made it hard to imagine asking anyone to pay higher taxes.

“I don’t think most people could bear to pay more,” he said.

Instead, he said he would rather give up the earned-income credit the family now receives and start paying for school lunches for his children.

“I don’t demand that the government does this for me,” he said. “I don’t feel like I need the government.”

How about Social Security? And Medicare? Can he imagine retiring without government help?

“I don’t think so,” he said. “No. I don’t know. Not the way we expect to live as Americans.”

A Starring Role

Bob Kopka and his wife often drive to the American Legion hall in North Branch on Thursday nights, joining the crowd gathered in the basement bar for the weekly meat raffle. Almost everyone present relies on the government to pay for their medical care.

Mr. Kopka, 74, has had three heart procedures in recent years. His wife recently had surgery to remove cataracts from both eyes.

Without Medicare, Mr. Kopka said, the couple could not have paid for the treatments.

“Hell, no,” he said. “No. Never. She would have to go blind.”

And him?

“I’d die.”

Few federal programs are more popular than Medicare, which along with Social Security assures a minimum quality of life for older Americans.

None are more central to the nation’s financial problems. The Congressional Budget Office projects that government spending on medical benefits, even taking into account the cost containment measures in the 2010 health care law, will rise 60 percent over the next decade. Then it will start rising even more quickly. The cost of caring for each beneficiary continues to increase, and the government projects that Medicare enrollment will grow by roughly one-third as baby boomers enter old age.

Spending on medical benefits will account for a larger share of the projected increase in the federal budget over the next decade than any other kind of spending except interest payments on the federal debt.

Medicare’s starring role in the nation’s financial problems is not well understood. Only 22 percent of respondents to the New York Times poll correctly identified Medicare as the fastest-growing benefits program. A greater number of respondents, 27 percent, chose programs for the poor. That category, which includes Medicaid, is slightly larger than Medicare today but is projected to add only half as much to federal spending over the next decade.

Medicare’s financial problems are much worse than Social Security’s. A worker earning average wages still pays enough in Social Security taxes to cover the benefits the worker is likely to receive in retirement, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute. Social Security is still running out of money because the program must also support spouses who do not work and workers who earn lower wages. But Medicare’s situation is even more dire because a worker earning average wages still contributes only $1 in Medicare taxes for every $3 in benefits likely to be received in retirement.

A woman who was 45 in 2010, earning $43,500 a year, will pay taxes that will reach a value of $87,000 by the time she retires, assuming the money is invested at an annual interest rate 2 percentage points above inflation, according to the Urban Institute analysis. But on average, the government will then spend $275,000 on her medical care. The average is somewhat lower for men, because women live longer.

Medicare is often described as an insurance program, but its premiums are not nearly high enough. In simple terms, Americans are getting more than they pay for.

But many older residents in Chisago say this problem belongs to younger generations. They paid what they were told; they want to collect what they were promised.

Some, like the Kopkas, have savings they can tap. Mr. Kopka still owns the landscaping business he started after leaving the Navy in the early 1960s. He and his wife own a three-bedroom home on three acres, valued by the county at $153,700. The mortgage is paid. They hope to pass the house to their children.

Others have nothing else. Barbara Sullivan, 71, moved last year to the apartments above the Chisago County Senior Center in North Branch. Waiting on a recent Friday for the hot lunch, which costs $3.50, she watched roughly 20 people play bingo for prizes including canned soup and Chef Boyardee pasta.

“Most of the seniors around here are struggling to make it,” she said.

She counts herself among them. She lives on $1,220 a month in Social Security benefits and relied on Medicare to pay for an operation in November.

She believes that she is taking more from the government than she paid in taxes. She worries about the consequences for her grandchildren. She said she would like politicians to propose solutions.

“We’re reasonable people,” she said. “We’re not going to say, ‘Give it to me and let my grandchildren suffer.’ I think they underestimate seniors when they think that way.”

But she cannot imagine asking people to pay higher taxes. And as she considered making do with less, she started to cry.

“Without it, I’m not sure how I would live,” she said. “With the check I’m getting from Social Security, it’s a constant struggle on making sure that I pay my rent and have enough left for groceries.

“I haven’t bought a Christmas present, I haven’t bought clothing in the last five years, simply because I can’t afford it.”

Keeping a Promise

Representative Cravaack often says he entered politics to lift the burden of debt from the shoulders of his two sons.

“I vision that I open up their backpacks and I put in a 50-pound rock and zip it back up again,” Mr. Cravaack told the Minnesota Freedom Council in October 2010. “And I say, ‘Sorry, son, you’re going to have to hump this the rest of your life.’ Because that’s exactly what we’re doing to our national debt right now to our children.”

Mr. Cravaack, a 53-year-old Navy veteran and a retired pilot for Northwest Airlines, was grounded by sleep apnea in 2007. He and his wife, an executive at the drug company Novo Nordisk, decided he would stay home with their sons. He soon became the first man to serve as president of the Chisago Lakes Parent Teacher Organization.

In August 2009, while driving the children to North Branch, he heard a talk radio host urging people to protest President Obama’s health care legislation. Mr. Cravaack and about two dozen others spent more than two hours the next day in Mr. Oberstar’s North Branch office before a staff member told them the congressman would not meet them. The rejection convinced Mr. Cravaack that Mr. Oberstar should be replaced. One of the other protesters, a woman who had taken her six children to the office, became Mr. Cravaack’s campaign scheduler.

Two weeks after speaking to the Freedom Council, he beat Mr. Oberstar by 1.6 percentage points, or 4,407 votes. Voters in Chisago, the southern tip of an expansive district, provided the margin of victory.

“We have to break away,” Mr. Cravaack told supporters, “from relying on government to provide all the answers.”

Mr. Cravaack has said he drew unemployment benefits during a furlough from Northwest in the early 1990s. He did not respond to several requests for an interview, nor to an e-mail with questions about his views and about whether his family has drawn on other benefits programs. This account is based on a review of his public statements.

Shortly after arriving in Congress, Mr. Cravaack voted with a vast majority of House Republicans for a plan to remake Medicare by providing money to its beneficiaries to buy private insurance. Senate Democrats have rejected that plan.

But Mr. Cravaack has also consistently said the government should not reduce its largest category of spending — benefits for the current generation of retirees. He also says he does not support cuts for people who will turn 65 over the next decade.

“If you’re 55 years and older, you don’t have to listen to this conversation because we have to keep those promises,” Mr. Cravaack told The Daily Caller last April. “People like myself, 52, if you’re 54 or younger, we’re going to have a conversation.”

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

The government helps Matt Falk and his wife care for their disabled 14-year-old daughter. It pays for extra assistance at school and for trained attendants to stay with her at home while they work. It pays much of the cost of her regular visits to the hospital.

Mr. Falk, 42, would like the government to do less.

“She doesn’t need some of the stuff that we’re doing for her,” said Mr. Falk, who owns a heating and air-conditioning business in North Branch. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing if society can afford it, but given the situation that our society is facing, we just have to say that we can’t offer as much resources at school or that we need to pay a higher premium” for her medical care.

Mr. Falk, who voted for Mr. Cravaack, said he did not want to pay higher taxes and did not want the government to impose higher taxes on anyone else. He said that his family appreciated the government’s help and that living with less would be painful for them and many other families. But he said the government could not continue to operate on borrowed money.

“They’re going to have to reduce benefits,” he said. “We’re going to have to accept it, and we’re going to have to suffer.”

One of the oldest criticisms of democracy is that the people will inevitably drain the treasury by demanding more spending than taxes. The theory is that citizens who get more than they pay for will vote for politicians who promise to increase spending.

But Dean P. Lacy, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation. Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates. And Professor Lacy found that the pattern could not be explained by demographics or social issues.

Chisago has shifted over 30 years from dependably Democratic to reliably Republican. Support for the Republican presidential candidate has increased relative to the national vote in each election since 1984. Senator John McCain won 55 percent of the vote here in 2008.

Residents say social issues play a role, but in recent years concerns about spending and taxes have predominated.

Voters in the North Branch school district have rejected increased financing for local schools in each of the past three years. In 2010, the district switched to a four-day school week, striking Monday from the calendar to save money.

Some of the fiercest advocates for spending cuts have drawn public benefits. Many, like Mr. Falk, have family members who rely on the government. They often cite that personal experience as the reason they want to cut government spending.

Brian Qualley, 49, has a sister who survived a brain tumor but was disabled by its removal. The government pays for her care at an assisted-living facility. Their mother scrapes by on Social Security.

Mr. Qualley said that the government should provide for those who need help, but that too much money was being wasted. Mr. Qualley, who owns a tattoo parlor in Harris, north of North Branch, said some of his customers paid with money from government disability checks.

“They’re getting $300 or $400 tattoos, and they’re wearing nice new Nike shoes that I can’t afford,” he said, looking up from working a complicated design into the left leg of a middle-aged woman. “I guess I shouldn’t say it because it’s my business, but I think a tattoo is a little too extravagant.”

But Mr. Qualley said he did not want to reduce benefits for the current generation of retirees. Rather, he said his own generation should get less, because they have time to prepare. This is a common position among the young and healthy in Chisago.

Mr. Qualley said he was saving some money for retirement, although, he added, “I don’t have a 401(k) or anything like that.”

“I also have a job that I don’t necessarily ever want to — or have to — retire from,” he said.

What if his hands start to shake as he gets older?

“Actually,” he said, the electric needle falling silent in his hand, “it’s my shoulders and neck that bother me most.”

Safety in Numbers

Barbara Nelson has little patience for people who say they will not need government help. She considers herself lucky she has not, and obligated to provide for those who do.

“Catastrophes happen in life,” she said, sitting in a coffee shop in Taylors Falls. “To be so arrogant that you think it won’t happen to you, that somehow you’re going to be one of the special ones, I disagree with that.”

Ms. Nelson, 61, who describes herself as a centrist Democrat, also dismisses the claim that people cannot afford to pay more taxes.

“Anyone who can come into a coffee shop and buy coffee is capable of paying more,” she said. “If someone’s life can be granted, in terms of adequate health care, if that means I give up five cups of coffee a month, that is a small price to pay.”

Gordy Peterson, 62, who has used a wheelchair for 30 years since a construction accident, has reluctantly reached a similar conclusion.

“I’m a conservative,” he said by way of introducing himself. He built his own house before his injury and paid for it in cash. He still thinks the government should operate that way. He never intended to depend on federal aid and said he sometimes felt guilty about it.

But for the last three decades, he has received a regular check from the Social Security disability insurance program, and Medicare has helped to pay his medical bills.

“Here I’m getting money, and everybody is struggling,” he said. “Even though it ain’t no cakewalk for me.”

Mr. Peterson used a workers’ compensation settlement to buy a farm that he managed with his brother-in-law, who is mentally handicapped and also on government disability.

“He was my legs, and we worked it,” Mr. Peterson said.

They grew corn, soybeans and rye, and even kept steers for a while. In good years they earned enough to live on. In bad years they lived on the government’s checks. Life would have been very difficult without them, he said.

Mr. Peterson, an easygoing man who looks down when he thinks and smiles sheepishly when he offers an opinion, looked down after completing the story of his own dependence on the safety net.

“It’s hard to beat up on the government when they’ve been so good to you,” he finally said. “I’ve never really thought about it, I guess.”

Lately, the government has been very good, indeed. The county, with federal financing, bought a corner of Mr. Peterson’s farm to build a new interchange for Interstate 35. He used the money to open a gas station at the edge of the farm in 2008 to serve the traffic that rolls off the new ramp. The business is prospering, and he no longer worries that he will need to depend on Social Security.

“But you can’t take that away,” he said. “My own sister has only Social Security. That’s all. That’s all she’s going to have. And if you take that away from her, Christ, she’d be a street person. I don’t think we can cut them off on that.”

How about higher taxes?

Maybe a little higher, he said. Maybe.

“I’m glad I’m not a politician,” he said. “We’re all going to complain no matter what they do. Nobody wants to put a noose around their own neck.”